★★★★★
Track Listing: Taming the Dragon; Luxe; You Can't Go Back Now; The Dreamer; Elegy for Amelia E.; Sleeping Giant; Hungry Ghost; Gainsbourg; Just Call Me Nige; Sassyassed Sassafrass; Swimming; London Gloaming. Personnel: Brad Mehldau: synths, Fender Rhodes, piano, spoken voice, "Ahh" vocals; Mark Guiliana: drums, electronics. Record Label: Nonesuch Records Style: Modern Jazz
- www.allaboutjazz.com
2014-04-20
★★★★★
Track Listing: Taming the Dragon; Luxe; You Can't Go Back Now; The Dreamer; Elegy for Amelia E.; Sleeping Giant; Hungry Ghost; Gainsbourg; Just Call Me Nige; Sassyassed Sassafrass; Swimming; London Gloaming. Personnel: Brad Mehldau: synths, Fender Rhodes, piano, spoken voice, "Ahh" vocals; Mark Guiliana: drums, electronics. Record Label: Nonesuch Records Style: Modern Jazz
- www.allaboutjazz.com
2014-03-12
★★★★★
Buy it from Buy the CDDownload as MP3Brad Mehldau & Mark GuilianaMehliana: Taming The DragonNonesuch2014 Brad Mehldau, master of slow-burning, classically inflected acoustic piano improv, gets down and dirty with Mehliana, the electronics duo he shares with jazz, hip-hop and drum'n'bass percussionist Mark Guiliana...
- www.theguardian.com
2014-02-21
★★★★★
Nonesuch Few jazz acts in the last 20 years have mastered the art of the piano trio format quite like Brad Mehldau. Since introducing himself to us in 1995, the 41-year-old Connecticut-bred ivory man has established himself as a bandleader, a soloist and a trusted sideman, collaborating with everyone from alto legend Lee Konitz to classical singer Renee Fleming to tabloid rocker John Mayer to art pop maestro Jon Brion...
- www.jambands.com
2012-01-26
★★★★★
Brad Mehldau released five Art of the Trio volumes with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy between 1997 and 2001. Three were recorded live at the Village Vanguard. The fifth volume contained two CDs. This box set collects them all, and adds a seventh CD of previously unreleased music from the Vanguard. There is a long liner-note essay by Ethan Iverson of the Bad Plus...
- jazztimes.com
2012-01-26
★★★★★
When a classically trained young piano improviser called Brad Mehldau emerged in the mid-1990s, he quickly established a patient, subtle and richly contrapuntal approach that took jazz piano-trio improvisation to a new level. Warner Brothers then sensibly left this partnership with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy alone to spin its own low-key, all-acoustic, lengthily sustained postbop stories over five Art of the Trio albums in as many years...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2011-12-19
★★★★★
In his 2000 book Fargo Rock City (Scribner), Chuck Klosterman explains a phenomenon in heavy metal that involves the critical threshold at which the speed of notes within a solo actually changes the inherent meaning of the sound. To illustrate his point, he describes a passage by ex-Kiss guitarist Vinnie Vincent that, upon crossing said threshold, "becomes the equivalent of a police whistle...
- www.allaboutjazz.com
2011-08-08
★★★★★
This set (two CDs, one DVD) contains a solo performance at the Marciac festival in France in 2006. The creative capacities of the most important jazz piano player of his generation herein receive their most comprehensive documentation to date. The first three pieces present three distinct Brad Mehldau identities: composer, redesigner of standards and ballads player...
- www.jazztimes.com
2011-03-28
★★★★★
Buy it from Buy the CDBrad MehldauLive in Marciac: +DVDNonesuch2011 Not only has Brad Mehldau given sustenance to his more traditionally jazz-rooted fans with this live solo-piano album (after an eclectic 2010 that saw the classical-strings collaboration Highway Rider and the Love Songs duet with mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter), he's countered the objection that he can be too preciously ruminative as well...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2011-03-07