Brad Mehldau

About

Also known as: Brad Mehidau, Brad Meldhau, Bradford Alexander Mehldau

Brad Mehldau has a knack for making a jazz piano trio feel like it contains entire worlds. The Jacksonville born pianist built his reputation through the late 1990s with his Art of the Trio series, earning the kind of praise that gets a musician called "the next great keyboard star of jazz" by critics who usually don't throw that sort of thing around. His long running trio with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy, later Jeff Ballard, has put out well over a dozen albums and sits at the center of everything he does. Beyond the trio, Mehldau has pushed into orchestral composition, electronic keyboards in a duo with drummer Mark Guiliana, song cycles for classical vocalists like Renée Fleming and Anne Sofie von Otter, and sessions with guitarist Pat Metheny. Pop and rock have always fed into his playing too, from carefully chosen covers to a genuine absorption of those sounds into his writing. Lately he has been recording material featuring Elliott Smith songs alongside collaborators Chris Thile and Daniel Rossen.