Jazz Hot “en V.O.”

By Josef Woodard

Of the current crop of important young jazz pianists, Brad Mehldau is one of the most paradoxical, as well as dazzling and evolutionary. Now in an impressive artistic stride, at the ripening age of 33, Mehldau has been a player on the global scene long enough to tell a broad-ranging story, and with powers of musicianship to make it resonate.
After studying with players like Fred Hersch, Junior Mance, and Kenny Werner at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan, the young prodigy was quickly making waves in jazz, as the pianist in Joshua Redman’s group in the early ‘90s. In that setting, Mehldau’s Keith Jarrett-like chops, sensitive touch, and classical lineage served Redman’s own musical intentions. He was, among other things, a fan of his father Dewey Redman’s period in Jarrett’s late ‘70s “American” quartet.
Suddenly, in a sweeping change of venue, Mehldau had left that group, tentatively launched his own career, and relocated to the remote outpost of Los Angeles from his native east coast. At the time, he was nursing a drug problem, and trying to get a fresh perspective on his life, and headed west at the urging of Los Angeles-based bassist Charlie Haden, with whom he recorded the fine trio sessions with Lee Konitz, live at the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles. Mehldau spent five “wilderness years” on the west coast, but returned home to Hartford, Connecticut, with wife, singer Fleurine, and young daughter, Eden, in tow. The circle continues, the artist grows.
For much of his still-young career as a leader, Mehldau has avidly pursued his creative life in the piano trio format, enjoying a rare rapport with drummer Jorge Rossy and bassist Larry Grenadier. Much like the Jarrett “Standards” trio, this group gives new life to old standards, but adds to the package an array of originals, and the odd revisited pop tune by groups such as Radiohead, one of Mehldau’s admitted favorites. There have been deviations from the path represented by the several volumes in the series of Warner Brothers recordings under the umbrella title Art of the Trio. In 1999, Mehldau released the nearest thing yet to a classical-tinged album, the bittersweetly lyrical solo project, Elegiac Cycle, and put out an all-original set of geographical tone poems, Places (2000), for trio.
The biggest departure yet, though, came last year with Largo. Produced by quirky pop producer and musician Jon Brion (who also wrote the distinctive music in Paul Thomas Anderson films Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love), Largo finds Mehldau circulating amidst electronics - albeit with subtle, organic uses - and with various rock and jazz players, even showcasing Mehldau on vibraphone. Experimentation is the rule, and, most importantly, it works.
Stylistically, the landscape continually shifts beneath the leader, as he careens through unusual musical traffic. Elements of jazz, rock (soft and hard, including Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android”), pure improvisation, and even lounge music (a suave medley of Jobim’s “Wave” and the Beatles’ “Mother Nature’s Son”) make for one of the finest examples of a “new” and inventive fusion aesthetic. Fittingly, another of last year’s New Fusion highlights was his former employer Redman’s intelligent funk-jazz album, elastic. They’re onto something.
A certain poetic logic colors the album’s milieu. Besides its musical definition, Largo is the name of a popular, hip club in Los Angeles, where Mehldau often found himself playing, steering clear of L.A.’s usual jazz clubs. Largo represented a period in Mehldau’s life, artistic and otherwise. He never left the piano trio format, which is still his anchor and which you’ll find him pursuing on the international festival circuit. But a certain built-in restlessness will no doubt lead Mehldau into other side projects as his future unfolds.

Jazz Hot : Largo is an unusual hybrid experiment, a jazz album which leans towards pop and other styles, without just slipping into the usual jazz-pop mixtures. It retains its experimental attitude. From an objective observer’s point of view, it sounds like you and producer Jon Brion went in with something of a plan, but also left plenty of margin for whatever to happen. Is that true?
Brad Mehldau : Yeah, that’s a perfect way to put it. For me, it was really different than any other record I’d done, just in the sense of the scope of it and the budget we were working with ahead of time. He booked six days at Capitol Records in Los Angeles. We had an eight-piece woodwind ensemble and an eight-piece brass ensemble. I had Larry and Jorge coming in for two days, and Jon had arranged for Matt Chamberlain and Jim Keltner, two other drummers, to come in. Within the week, we just kept calling other people who showed up impromptu.
So it was exactly like you said. A certain amount of it was planned and there were some things that just happened off the cuff. I wrote a fair amount of stuff, but I think within the first four days, we’d pretty much gotten everything that I’d written out. So there were a good two whole days of really just trying things in the studio, writing stuff in the studio, and two of the things on there were really just jams, with no music. Again, that was something totally new for me.

Like the tune “Free Willy?”
Yes, and “Drojes,” a Dutch word that means “black licorice.”

Is that you playing vibes on the album?
Yeah, I’m playing vibes there, on the “Wave/Mother Nature’s Son” medley and on “You’re Vibing Me.”

This is a new side of you that I wasn’t aware of. Are many people aware of this?
I don’t think too many people. I played a little vibes on a Willie Nelson record that Daniel Lanois produced. In some ways, Daniel is kind of similar to Jon in that what they do is set up an environment where they bring everything in that they have.
So the studio looked like a music library of the 20th century. There are drums and old cymbals and weird shit like tack pianos and chamberlain. Then he had this beautiful set of Ludwig vibes that he’d brought in and set up. I played a little and I knew I could play them serviceably in a melodic fashion. I don’t have an incredible amount of chops, but for those things, I could make sense of them.

There’s a part in your version of the song by Radiohead, “Paranoid Android,” a solo piano interlude which suddenly sounded Schubertian to me. That whole song does seem like you’re covering all these different areas and weaving it together. Was that the concept?
Yeah, that was the one that took the longest and was the most produced, if you want to put it that way. Our idea was to kind of adhere to the original, in terms of doing all those sections. That’s what drew me into that record, and that song on OK Computer. It had an epic scope. You had this sort of angst-y thing going on, then this rocky part with the blistering guitar solo, and then it goes into this kind of hymn thing, which is achingly beautiful. I loved all those three parts, so we decided to stick to those parts, but trying to set up a different texture for each part with the band.
For the first section, Darek Oles is playing acoustic bass, and then when it switches off into what would be the guitar solo, he drops out and I’m playing a bass sound that is actually just from the acoustic piano. It was also used on “Free Willy,” as well. It sounds kind of like a baby bass or a marimba.
What it was, again one of Jon’s tricks, he puts poster putty - like clay - over the bottom two octaves of the strings in the spot where it isolates the first harmonic of that note and mutes the rest of the string. So what you get is a note sounding like it’s one octave above, but in this weird marimba kind of sound. Then he mic’ed it in a certain way and then panned it off to one side, so it really sounded like a bass. That was great, because what it did was to give me the ability to make my own bass lines, and harmonically free me up so I didn’t have to worry about corresponding with the bass player exactly. I could just let my fingers do the walking.

How do you see Largo in terms of your career? Is it an anomaly, or are you going to pursue this more?
It’s hard to say. It was a pretty profound experience for me, in terms of doing a record like that, and knowing that you can do a record like that. There are a lot of great records like this, but actually having the experience to get to do it yourself and having the time and the scope, I look at it, first off, that I was lucky to be able to do that. It also changed my view of what a record can be.
In one sense, I was really great that Larry and Jorge could come along for the ride, as it were, and be there for two days and put their thing on it, too. Where they’re playing, it’s amidst all this other stuff, and it doesn’t sound anything like what someone might associate our trio with. The experience for all of us, together as a trio, for whatever reason, from stepping outside of whatever our familiar zone is together and then coming back to it was sort of fresh.
That was almost a year and a half ago when we recorded it, but I think it has influenced some of the things that I’ve written since then. I think we all feel a little more loose and willing to delve into different rhythmic feels and different forms of tunes, not always getting stuck in `play the head, solo, head’ format that you usually think of with jazz. That’s great, and it works. I don’t ever see abandoning that for any particular reason, because it’s boring or whatever.
But it when you’ve played with a band for seven years like we have, it’s like a marriage or anything, where it gets harder and harder to get excited about stuff. What you have to do is to constantly create new stuff and the ante keeps on going up, in terms of thinking `what can we do now to keep it exciting and fresh for us?’ I think it was good, in that sense, for all three of us.

Thinking about the shows I heard at the Montreal Jazz Festival, you put standards through some intriguing “abuses,” in a positive and creative way. “Get Happy,” in 7/4 time, was pleasantly startling, a new variation on Harold Arlen’s very old theme.
Yeah, that’s really a new one. We’re still working out the kinks in that one.

Speaking of that, you play in “odd times” so smoothly and naturally. Where do you think that instinct come from?
Yeah, I guess a lot of that is something that started with Jorge. We started playing together a lot, before we settled in with Larry as a trio, per se. We’d just get together and work on odd meter stuff. That was an area of his expertise. He’s much more comfortable playing weird things against other things, like five against seven and things like that. I guess Jeff Watts is the other one who comes to mind, who, a few years ago, set a precedent for bringing that back into the fold. “Smitty” Smith did, too, with Steve Coleman and those bands he had.

And the Dave Holland bands?
Yeah, exactly. I remember hearing them, at the old Knitting Factory and thinking `wow, these guys are playing these odd meters, but they’re grooving, and it doesn’t sound like “hey, everybody, we’re playing odd meters.”’
I guess that’s the objective there, to make a seven feel as loose and phrasing openly the same way if you listened to the Coltrane quartet playing a four or a three, the way they’re going over the bar line and really getting loose within that structure, metrically. You can have that same thing with a seven or a five.
A lot of that comfort just comes from playing a lot together. Fortunately, we’ve had a lot of opportunity to play with each other over the years. Usually we have at least one or two things in seven.

In the beginning of your solo career, back in the mid-90s, it must have been a little strange having your first album coming out on Warner Brothers, with the attendant expectations and big label machinery behind you. They didn’t seem to overhype you, which was nice. Were you worried about that?
Yeah, I guess a little. I still worry about that, because the whole notion of hype--I don’t want to be part of that. When I was playing over in Amsterdam, I got a slot in the North Sea Jazz Festival, and they had some sound bite about “Brad Mehldau plays with the passion of Miles Davis and Coltrane and the intellectual vigor of Beethoven and Brahms.” That was on the level of absurdity.
Those are some mighty shoes to fill.
Yeah. Who the hell did that? They probably pieced it together from something I said. Maybe I mentioned Beethoven and Miles Davis in the same sentence when I was talking about influences, and there you go. People were coming up to me. It was just ridiculous.
The whole thing with that is that I do get a little fearful of hype, because then people have an expectation, and usually, you can’t live up to expectations. It would be great, in a perfect world, if people could just hear you with completely open ears and with no pretenses about what they’re going to hear.

On your second album for Warner Brothers, the first Art of the Trio volume, you did a couple of tunes that are associated with Chet Baker. Was that a conscious thing, or just coincidental?
You’re the first person who picked up on that. People have asked me “did you hear `Blame It On My Youth’ from Nat King Cole, or `I Fall in Love Too Easily’ from Miles?” But actually, the recordings I heard of them that got me interested in playing them as ballads is that one Chet Baker disc, Chet Baker Sings on Pacific, with the west coast rhythm section--Russ Freeman and those guys. I heard him singing those songs, and that’s how I learned the tunes.

He was so ultra-languid in his treatment of those ballads.
The “Blame It on My Youth” is from the Let’s Get Lost soundtrack. What appealed to me about that was the deep irony involved. Here he is, singing a song with a theme about youth being over and he has lost his teeth and is an old junkie or whatever, on his last legs. He’s singing “blame it on my youth,” and there’s just this heavy irony. He’s really imbuing phrases and the way he’s singing the lyrics with that. That appealed to me.

You’ve referred to the influence of literature on your music, and your publishing company is called Werther Music, after Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. How does the composition process work for you? Do you get ideas from non-musical art forms?
For me, there’s a real connection between literature and music. I love to read. Oftentimes, when I’m composing, I’m not thinking so much about the melody and the harmony and things like that. Those things come out of this more general philosophical--if you want to use that term--idea.
Often, I’m thinking `what can I do with a very simple idea and restricting myself to that as the actual material and really only use that?’ That’s something that appeals to me in any art form, whether it’s music or literature or whatever, it’s the way art kind of imitates life in the sense that you just have this blueprint. Everything can be organic and coming out of this one idea, with everything germinating out of that.
I tried to get that happening with these compositions--restricting the amount of material, but then saying, for instance, `well, I’ll take this bit of material, turn it upside-down and stretch it out a little and change it rhythmically and do all these things with it. Then, the harmony can come from that.’ That’s not necessarily original, but I’m trying to put that into a jazz context.

It sounds to me, in your music and in what you’re describing, that you draw on ideas from both the classical and the jazz orbits. Is there always a kind of dialogue between the two for you?
Only in the last three years or so, there has been a change. I started out studying classical music, from the time I was six years old. I was really into it and enjoyed it right up until when I was 13 or 14 years old and started checking out jazz. There was a little overlap for a minute, but at that point, being young like that, there were irreconcilable differences between the styles. I couldn’t bring the two together. I couldn’t figure out a way to do both. Also, I didn’t have the discipline to go on with classical. I got into rock and roll and having a good time, etcetera.
I quit classical until a few years ago. I just started checking it out, really because I was enjoying listening to it again. I rediscovered it. I guess that has just rubbed off on my jazz playing. When I sit down to improvise, a lot of those things just come out.
With any of the influences, whether it’s classical or jazz or even literary, or nature or the world, there’s this unconscious, intuitive thing. Usually, there’s this gestation period where I’m checking out some Brahms or some McCoy Tyner for a month or so, and then, several months later, I’ll realize `hmm, that came out in this composition and I didn’t even see it.’ It’s always kind of a mystical thing how influences become internalized. Then you see later, in retrospect, how they came out.

But that’s a more organic way for it to happen than if you sit down with an intention of cutting and pasting ideas.
For sure. Yeah, it is a more organic way of doing it. It’s being truer to yourself. That way, you don’t have to force anything or do anything like that. You just go with what’s right for you, and then these things kind of happen. The influences just come out.

Are you a big Keith Jarrett fan?
Oh yeah, for sure. The Koln Concert, the solo album, still blows me away. I still put that on a pedestal. On those solo records, the way he could be creative for 25 minutes at a time and probably mainly improvising is pretty amazing. I love that. That’s a real ideal to aspire to - not to play like him, but to have the amount of creativity that he has, or the ability he has to tap into it.

Keith Jarrett came to a place in his career where he took it upon himself to focus on classical music, recording Bach, Shostakovich, Scarlatti and others. Do you think you would ever come to a point like that?
I don’t see that in terms of recording. I wouldn’t say never, because in 40 years, I might change my mind. But definitely not anytime in the near future, because I think I have a pretty right-sized idea about what I’m good at. In terms of classical music, I think of myself more as a fan and not as much of a classical player. I’m really just not, in terms of performing it or recording it.
I’m the person who’s going out and buying the new Evgeny Kissin record or the Christian Zimmerman recording of Chopin Balades or whatever it is and saying `wow, listen to that.’ What I’m always amazed at with those classical piano players - even the ones who maybe aren’t as interesting or unique or have a voice that’s exciting - is just the incredible amount of control they have over the instrument. That’s another thing you don’t encounter or necessarily need in jazz.
There’s something about when you’re playing a Bach fugue: what’s really going to make that jump is the actual physical control or technique that you have to bring out every voice with absolute control or clarity, to manipulate that music which has already been written. Even a Schubert or Chopin sonata, which is much more simple harmonically, there’s still so much more nuance that they’re dealing with, this whole level of subtlety that I am nowhere near (laughs).
By the same token, that’s something where Keith Jarrett kind of stands alone in that. I haven’t followed his trio work much, but with his solo piano recordings that I know, he’s getting that control over the voices, on a pretty high level. Being able to manipulate inner voicings of a chord and bring them out so they take on melodic implications. That’s a pretty cool piano thing. That’s usually what I’m working on when I’m practicing, and that’s a lifelong thing.

Of course, the other side of this conversation is that classical musicians often seem in awe of jazz players. They have improv envy, basically. They just don’t get how to do it, even if they’re virtuosos.
Yeah, that’s interesting. I’m sure it wasn’t always like that. When you read about Beethoven or Lizst, they were really proficient improvisers. But I guess it’s more of a thing where that’s the biggest difference, looking at it as your mission to interpret to the best degree something that’s already been written. The most conservative classical approach is to really find the ur text, with no editors added on, no frills, no pedal markings, and try to figure out exactly what the composer wanted. That’s so opposite o jazz, or a big segment of jazz and its whole aesthetic.

In some of your extended cadenzas, the improvisational flavor is maybe more out of a classical mold, a theme-and-variations approach as opposed to a traditional jazz approach. Is that a conscious process for you, or just the way it comes out by this point?
It’s probably pretty unconscious at this point. I pretty much try to cut loose on those cadenzas or whatever they are. At any given moment, what I’ll access oftentimes will be what I’m working on, classically. I’ll notice that retrospectively, listening to concert tapes, thinking `oh yeah, there’s a little snippet of that harmonic movement from the Faure Nocturne. Oh yeah, that’s a bit of that Hindemith peeking out there.’ But I’m never conscious of it when I’m doing it.
Not to get real general, but that’s the fun thing about jazz for me, that you have this opportunity to grab onto whatever you’re absorbing and you’re a sponge. Then you spit it out on the gig. Oftentimes, there’s an interesting sort of gestation period. I’ve noticed, at least, with me, where I’ll be working on something… last summer, I was working on the two Faure Nocturnes really hard, trying to play them as well as I could, technically, and memorize them just for my own fun. Six months later, in some of my writing and in some of my soloing and those cadenzas, I started noticing them come out.
It’s interesting how that works. Sometimes, there’s a period where it sit in you and then it becomes assimilated into your vocabulary.

You’ve effectively liberated the left hand in your playing, compared to a conventional jazz piano stance. I noticed it first around the time you played with Lee Konitz and Charlie Haden in Los Angeles. Is that something you’ve put a lot of energy into?
For sure. Right then was a certain point. Still, it’s something that I’m working on a lot. At first, it was a little conscious, because I was trying to interject my left hand into the solo and play some melodic things. Hopefully, over the years, it’s become more smooth and… what’s the word?

Integrated?
Integrated, that’s it. So it doesn’t break up the structural integrity of whatever is going on. I think at first, it was like `ok, hey look, here’s my left hand playing melodically. It’s not just a claw in the middle register.’ I always remember Fred Hersch used to complain about that. I took about eight or nine lessons with him when I was at the New School in New York. That was a big gripe of his: he used to complain about the claw left hand, the left hand just punching these chords and then your right hand is playing somewhere around the upper middle register and playing single note lines.
There’s a reason why that is so codified, because it works really well, and you have a function that works well in a band. But it is easy to get sort of stuck in that.

Were you influenced by piano trios, per se, coming up?
Yes. I would kind of get into these rhythm sections and check out how they were interacting. I would check out that a lot of what made these units happen was that the piano would be in one part of the beat, the drummer would be in another part of the beat, and the bass player would be an anchor between the two of them. I would get into those.
I’ve definitely checked out the Bill Evans stuff with Scott Lafaro and Paul Motian, but I don’t think it influenced me too much, when it came time in the last two or three years that I’ve played trio. But again, there may be an unconscious way that that affected what I’m doing now. It’s hard to say.

Critics are too quick to leap to the assumption that every pianist owes a great debt to Bill Evans, don’t you think?
Thank you. That’s so true. I don’t know why they hear Bill Evans more than Keith Jarrett or McCoy Tyner. No one wants to think that their influences are very visible. It would be great to me if someone could just say `man, I can’t tell what your influences are.’ But for me, the most obvious one would still be McCoy Tyner. When I get into those uptempo parts, there’s a rhythmic thing I fall back on, getting a facility for just playing fast.

Do you sense any kind of artistic maturity, looking back at where you’ve been, and gauging your present situation as a musician?
It’s hard to say. I don’t know if things have plateaued or whatever. I would probably say not. It has been interesting for more, because I’ve never tried to dictate what I’m going to do in the future. I usually pretty much keep it in the now and don’t think too much about the grand scope of things.
The maturing process has been steadier. I think there was a certain point, in terms of musical maturity when Larry, Jorge and I noted that the gig took on kind of consistency in terms of our happiness. Maybe in the first two years, it was a little more hit and miss. Maybe there would be two nights that were really great, one night that was so-so and then two nights that just sucked. After a certain point, that leveled out. What it pretty much is now is that we feel really good about most gigs. Once in awhile, we feel exceptionally great, like `there was some real magic jumping off there. How did that happen?’ And maybe once in awhile, maybe every 20 gigs or so, it sucks. So the numbers are getting better.
That probably just comes from playing a lot together. That has been the most valuable thing for me.

I sense that there’s a tacit feeling in the group that it’s ok to stretch out and try out new things.
For sure.

Is the piano trio format something that will be continually satisfying for you?
I think so. Again, this is one of those questions where I don’t know. In the near future, I definitely have no plans to stop it. But it’s always strange with the trio, because I could never orchestrate what makes a trio unique, or what makes our trio unique, or what makes the format unique. For every one thing that you could say, you could say exactly the opposite. It always comes out like tautologies. You could say `Larry’s always there, laying down the support and anchoring the whole thing. That’s what his role is.’ But that’s on one tune. On another tune, he’s getting much more interactive. And Jorge is laying down a basic groove and playing very simple on one tune, and then much more sparse and interactive on the next one.
It’s always hard to define why it has worked.

RONNIE SCOTT' 45th anniversary

David Sinclair

On the 29th October, 1959 in London's Gerrard Street, two young musicians, Ronnie Scott and Pete King, both saxophonists, and considered mad at the time, rented premises where jazz began under the name of the Ronnie Scott's Club. On that opening night players included Ronnie himself, Tubby Hayes on sax and vibes, Peter King alto, Eddie Thompson piano among others. At that time, because of a ban on American solo musicians by the Musicians Union,
only British jazzmen were allowed to play on the premises. It took until1965 until this ban was lifted that the great US superstars including Ben Webster, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Zoot Sims, Coleman Hawkins, and so very many others were to appear in the club.
Also in 1965, Ronnie and Pete borrowed the then massive amount of £35,000 to move from their Gerrard Street site to the new, and present, home in Frith Street. Opening night here was to find the premises structurally in some chaos; there was no front door, only one toilet, wires dangling from the unfinished ceiling, but it began an era of what soon became, and has remained, Europe's premier Jazz Club.
The flow of prestigious names increased, big bands led by Count Basie, Stan Kenton, Buddy Rich, Harry James; individual jazz heroes such as Mingus, Monk, Dexter Gordon, Elvin Jones, Benny Carter the list is endless, plus singers of the quality of Ella, Sarah Vaughn, Betty Carter and Anita O'Day. Almost everybody who is anybody has appeared there. The main star does two sets per night, proceeded by a support band also with two sets, all for only one admission charge. Excellent value for the audience and providing constant working opportunities for British musicians who normally are the support group, but quite often provide the rhythm section for the US stars.
While Pete King did all the work behind the scenes, Ronnie led his own band in a regular support spot, and to the constant joy of the audience he introduced all the acts with his hilarious stories known as "These are the Jokes" Examples; "I'm not a Jew. Just Jewish....My aunt said to my uncle Reuben "What would you do if you came home and found me in bed with another man?"...uncle replied "I'd kick his guide dog"....."Enjoy a meal from our kitchens..50 million flies can't be wrong!'.
Sadly Ronnie died in December 1996, but I still get the strange feeling every week when I walk into the club that he is still there. Thankfully, Pete King is still there and still running things as well as ever, no longer quite such the background figure that he was when Ronnie was around, but now it is seen just how much he has always been such a responsible part of that wonderful partnership. Regretfully Pete now feels that it is time to step down and ownership is passing in to new hands from next year. We all wish Ronnie well wherever he is playing now, and offer our Thanks and good wishes to Pete who will be able to spend much more time with his lovely wife Stella (though whether she will enjoy this.....). Finally our very Best Wishes for the future to the new owners. Ronnie Scott's Club has been, and we hope will continue to be, a joy forever