BRAD MEHLDAU & JOSHUA REDMAN
CONNECTIONS

September 20, 2016 | by Rusty Aceves

Joshua Redman & Brad Mehldau

With an eye to pianist Brad Mehldau’s exclusive performances of his 2010 masterwork Highway Rider in early October – a project that features saxophonist Joshua Redman – we look back at the history these two modern jazz giants have had together over the years.

The Florida-born Mehldau first worked with Redman in 1992 while the pianist was still a preternaturally talented 22-year-old student at The New School in New York. Fresh from graduation, he joined Redman’s stellar working quartet that also included two other artists clearly destined for greatness, bassist Christian McBride and drummer Brian Blade. During his nearly two-year stint with Redman, Mehldau toured the world and performed on Redman’s lauded 1994 Warner Brothers release Moodswing, a masterful release of all-original compositions that elevated not only the leader’s profile, but that of Mehldau as well. They collaborated on the soundtrack to celebrated director Louis Malle’s final film, Vanya on 42nd Street, before Mehldau left to put his energy into the new trio he had formed with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy (later replaced by Jeff Ballard). The pianist reunited with the Joshua Redman quartet for Timeless Tales (for Changing Times), Redman’s 1998 program of pop music covers, and continued on his own trajectory, having established the Brad Mehldau Trio as one of the greatest and longest lived working units in jazz.

In 2010 the leader/sideman tables were turned, as Redman was a featured guest artist on what became Mehldau’s most expansive project to date. For Highway Rider, Mehldau reunited with Los Angeles based producer and songwriter Jon Brion, who helmed Mehldau’s first foray into large ensemble writing on 2002’s influential Largo. Employing the trio plus saxophone, an additional drummer, and orchestra, Highway Rider is based around the theme of a journey, which can relate to any number of experiences – from Mehldau’s adventure in composing the work and the musicians balancing improvisation and composition in interpreting it, to the audience’s experience as listeners. The piece is a major highlight of Mehldau's discography, with the BBC saying: "The pianist’s latest is a concept album with an odyssey-like subtext. A work that stretches the artist’s conceptual scope without stifling his essence."
Talking about Redman’s role in the project, Mehldau wrote:

The soloist besides myself on the record is Joshua Redman, and I felt strongly that he would be the person who could find a way to address the specificity of the written music and still disrupt the prevailing order. Josh, one of my favorite musicians, can do that for a few reasons. First, he has an extra-quick learning curve – he was hearing the strings and winds for the first time in the studio, and quickly was making intuitive decisions about how to interact with them – when to play over them, when to defer to them, when to ignore them. That was really impressive and a pleasure to witness. Second, he has a strong sense of shape in everything he plays – there is always a direction in his solos, a sense of a beginning and a destination. Finally, the emotional contours of Josh’s playing are rich and satisfying for me, and in any context, no matter how dense, he is always directly dealing with the feeling of the music first and foremost, always playing with passion. That is so important.

Here's a behind-the-scenes video of the album's production: