Catching Up with Jazz Pianist Brad Mehldau

Brad spoke with Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) about his early career, recent recordings — 'RoundAgain' with Joshua Redman, Christian McBride, and Brian Blade; the solo 'Suite: April 2020' to benefit Jazz Foundation of America; the upcoming 'Variations on a Melancholy Theme' with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra—and what's ahead. Read the article:

Jazz pianist/composer Brad Mehldau had vastly different plans for 2020, but he responded to the pandemic’s challenges by shifting his approach. He had planned to tour with Joshua Redman, Christian McBride, and Brian Blade upon the July 2020 release of RoundAgain, the long-awaited follow-up album to the group’s lauded 1994 release, MoodSwing, but canceled due to COVID. Sidelined from the road, the groundbreaking Mehldau recorded another album in solitude, Suite: April 2020, at the onset of the pandemic, and has another album coming out this summer, Variations on a Melancholy Theme, which he’s described “as if Brahms woke up one day and had the blues.”

Mehldau has been performing in front of audiences since he was a teenager and studied jazz and contemporary music at The New School, where he frequently gigged around New York City, quickly making a name in the jazz scene. He has played in a wide variety of bands and projects over the past 30 years, most frequently in a trio format, and has also toured as a solo pianist. BMI caught up with Mehldau, who just finished his latest project, Jacob’s Ladder, roughly a year in the making and recorded entirely remotely.

Your most recent release, RoundAgain, which you recorded with Joshua Redman, Christian McBride, and Brian Blade in late 2019, was a reunion of sorts — this is only the second album the four of you released as a quartet, nearly 25 years after MoodSwing. How was the creative process different this time around now that each of you have built lauded careers and gained years of experience and perspective?

The experience of getting back together with Joshua, Christian and Brian was much like what I have with a few close friends I’ve known since my youth. You may not have seen each other for a long stretch of time, but when you reconnect, there is no segue needed to jump back where you left off in the friendship— with all the nice things about it — and then you can immediately continue and share your present experiences with each other.

Last year, you also released Suite: April 2020, which you wrote while sheltering at home during the beginning of the pandemic. It’s quite a juxtaposition from RoundAgain – rather than a collaborative reunion, this is more of a solitary “musical snapshot,” as you explained it. Why did you feel compelled to make this album, and how did it help you navigate the early stages of the pandemic?

In one way, it was along the lines of what I always try to do with music: make sense of, and hopefully discover, beauty in life experience. In this case, though, that really felt like a directive, and had a concrete corollary in the real world — the initial lockdown as it unfolded in the first few months of COVID [in] March and April of 2020. Each short piece in the April 2020 suite telegraphed a particular experience that went with that. These were new kinds of experiences, for myself and I imagine many others. There was the idea to find common ground — that maybe other people would connect with the musical descriptions.

Proceeds from Suite: April 2020 supported the Jazz Foundation of America. Can you explain what this organization does, and why you wanted to help them?

Jazz Foundation of America supplies direct assistance to musicians in a number of ways. Two big ones are paying for health care costs pro bono, and assistance with rent and housing. I’ve been admiring their work for a while now, but it became more valuable and urgent as COVID began to wipe away the steady income of jazz musicians (not to mention musicians of all stripes, and a variety of other people, like those who work in the venues, vendors, etc.), to the point where they had, literally, no money for rent. The impetus to give proceeds from April 2020 to them made sense, as a way of giving back to the jazz community what was given to me when I was coming up. The kind of generosity I experienced then seems more important than ever now.