While sheltering at home with his family during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Brad Mehldau wrote twelve new songs about what he was experiencing; he was able to record them safely in a studio, together with tunes by Neil Young, Billy Joel, and Jerome Kern that mean a great deal to him, for this album, Suite: April 2020. Includes download of sheet music PDF for the piece “remembering before all this.”
"I can't overstate the tremendous beauty and mastery glimmering here," says Simon Rentner, host of WGBO's The Checkout, about Brad Mehldau's new album, Suite: April 2020. Mehldau discusses the album, which he wrote while sheltering at home with his family and recorded during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, with WBGO's Nate Chinen on the latest episode of the show, which you can hear here.
Brad Mehldau gave a special solo performance without an audience in Amsterdam's Concertgebouw as part of its Empty Concertgebouw Sessions. He performed five pieces from his new album, Suite: April 2020, followed by John Coltrane's "Satellite" and Van Heusen/Burke's "Here’s That Rainy Day." You can watch the session here.
The members of the original Joshua Redman Quartet—Redman (saxophone), Brad Mehldau (piano), Christian McBride (bass), and Brian Blade (drums)—reunite with the July 10, 2020 release of RoundAgain, the group’s first recording since 1994’s MoodSwing. The album features seven newly composed songs: three from Redman, two from Mehldau, and one each from McBride and Blade. A live version of Redman’s “Right Back Round Again” may be seen below, in a video directed by Matthew Beighley; the album version is available to download with the album pre-order.
Redman says of his first group as a bandleader, which was together for approximately a year and a half: “I realized almost immediately that this band wouldn’t stay together for very long. They were without a doubt, for our generation, among the most accomplished and innovative on their respective instruments. They were already all in such high demand—everyone wanted to play with them! And they all had such strong and charismatic musical personalities—destined to start soon pursuing their own independent visions. I knew better than anyone else just how incredibly lucky I was to have even that short time with them.”
In the intervening decades, each has played with one or more of the others on various occasions, but all four had never properly reunited. “I knew it would happen, but I didn’t know when,” Redman admits. “We were all so busy, and we needed the space, both in our schedules and in our creative development.”
“We would have done it ten years ago if it were up to me,” Mehldau insists. “Josh, Christian, and Brian are all my heroes. It’s like playing with The Avengers.”
Blade adds, “This band is like a turntable where the stylus was lifted but the turntable is still spinning. We just had to drop the needle, and there we were with all of the information we had gathered. It has gotten deeper because of life itself, and because Joshua, Brad, and Christian plumb the depths every day.”
“These guys have grown exponentially,” McBride insists. “They are super-monsters now, and playing with them gave me a hard look at myself. And when you’re intimate creating art, even if you don’t play together for twenty years, you only need two bars to realize what the feeling is about, because the feeling never leaves."
While sheltering at home with his family in during the COVID-19 pandemic, Brad Mehldau wrote twelve new songs about what he was experiencing; he was able to record them safely in a studio, together with tunes by Neil Young, Billy Joel, and Jerome Kern that mean a great deal to him, for this album, Suite: April 2020. Includes download of sheet music PDF for the piece “remembering before all this.”
The members of the original Joshua Redman Quartet—Redman (saxophone), Brad Mehldau (piano), Christian McBride (bass), and Brian Blade (drums)—reunite with the July 10, 2020 release of RoundAgain, the group’s first recording since 1994’s MoodSwing. The album features seven newly composed songs: three from Redman, two from Mehldau, and one each from McBride and Blade. A live version of Redman’s “Right Back Round Again” may be seen below, in a video directed by Matthew Beighley; the album version is available to download with the album pre-order.
Redman says of his first group as a bandleader, which was together for approximately a year and a half: “I realized almost immediately that this band wouldn’t stay together for very long. They were without a doubt, for our generation, among the most accomplished and innovative on their respective instruments. They were already all in such high demand—everyone wanted to play with them! And they all had such strong and charismatic musical personalities—destined to start soon pursuing their own independent visions. I knew better than anyone else just how incredibly lucky I was to have even that short time with them.”
In the intervening decades, each has played with one or more of the others on various occasions, but all four had never properly reunited. “I knew it would happen, but I didn’t know when,” Redman admits. “We were all so busy, and we needed the space, both in our schedules and in our creative development.”
“We would have done it ten years ago if it were up to me,” Mehldau insists. “Josh, Christian, and Brian are all my heroes. It’s like playing with The Avengers.”
Blade adds, “This band is like a turntable where the stylus was lifted but the turntable is still spinning. We just had to drop the needle, and there we were with all of the information we had gathered. It has gotten deeper because of life itself, and because Joshua, Brad, and Christian plumb the depths every day.”
“These guys have grown exponentially,” McBride insists. “They are super-monsters now, and playing with them gave me a hard look at myself. And when you’re intimate creating art, even if you don’t play together for twenty years, you only need two bars to realize what the feeling is about, because the feeling never leaves."
