Pianist Brad Mehldau and saxophonist Joshua Redman, longtime friends and frequent collaborators, head out for a brief duo tour of the United States, starting at the Williams Center for the Arts at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, tonight, followed by stops in Philadelphia, New York City, Ithaca, and San Francisco, where the duo makes its West Coast debut at the Herbst Theatre for the San Francisco Jazz Festival. As the San Francisco Chronicle writes: "Two of jazz's most gifted improvisers converse in the moment."

The US tour comes after a number of solo dates from Mehldau and a late-summer tour for Redman with his group James Farm, as well as a duo tour of Europe from Redman and Mehldau earlier in the summer. They return to Europe next month for two week tour of Spain, Switzerland, Netherlands, Germany, and Luxembourg.

See below for all of the currently scheduled duo dates; for additional information on these and upcoming solo dates, go to nonesuch.com/on-tour.

"It's like one of those friendships where you don't see someone for a long stretch and then you fall right back where you left off, yet you don't harp on the past," Mehldau told the Ottawa Citizen when he and Redman were in Canada earlier this year to perform at the Ottawa and Montreal jazz festivals. "With some people, you can pick up like that and it's not strange, with some people you can't. With Josh and I, it's been easy over the years."

The difference with this friendship, quips the Ottawa Citizen's Peter Hum, is that these two friends "among the most potent and influential jazz instrumentalists of their generation, and what Mehldau calls 'picking up' is in fact world-class improvising before rapt audiences."

"We always find new things when we play," Redman tells the Allentown Morning Call in advance of tonight's concert.

Mehldau tells the paper he finds a "particular" freedom playing with Redman, "which comes from a long relationship together, and also his personality. He never steps on my toes, but at the same time inspires me with the conviction of what he's playing."

Mehldau recently performed at the BBC Maida Vale studios in London for BBC Radio 2's Jamie Cullum show. The second part of the session, in which he performs a solo version of Radiohead's "Jigsaw Falling Into Place," aired this week and can be heard online at bbc.co.uk. Mehldau's segment begins around 44 minutes in.

Brad Mehldau and Joshua Redman can be heard performing together on Mehldau's 2010 album Highway Rider. To pick up a copy of that or any of the albums in their respective Nonesuch catalogs, head to the Nonesuch Store, where orders include high-quality, 320 kbps MP3s of the album at checkout.

JOSHUA REDMAN / BRAD MEHLDAU FALL 2011 DUO TOUR