Brad Mehldau's latest album, the two-disc Highway Rider, is out this week on Nonesuch Records and available in the Nonesuch Store with an exclusive bonus demo/commentary track. The project pairs the pianist/composer with producer Jon Brion for the first time since 2002's Largo and features performances from Mehldau’s trio, plus drummer Matt Chamberlain, saxophonist Joshua Redman, and a chamber orchestra, with orchestrations by Mehldau.

Mehldau, Brion, and the new album are the subject of a feature article in the New York Times written by music critic Nate Chinen. The article examines the "impressive" new album, the history between the collaborators—"an allegiance unique in the worlds of jazz and pop, and squarely belonging to neither"—and Mehldau's evolution as a composer since their first pairing.

Chinen talks with the pianist and the producer about the new project and their previous and first recording together, Largo, which the writer describes as "probably the most emulated jazz release of the last decade." Given that history, the new album brings with it "a certain expectation, one that Highway Rider meets more than halfway."

Read the complete article at nytimes.com.

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The Financial Times takes a look at the project as well, speaking with Mehldau about his early influences in music outside the jazz world, both pop and classical, and how that has affected the creation of the new piece.

"Pianist Brad Mehldau doesn’t so much stride between jazz, classical music and pop as swirl and eddy between them," explains writer Mike Hobart, "absorbing traces as he goes." On Highway Rider, says Hobart, "Mehldau’s scoring develops a two-part melody into a rainbow of textural subtleties, resolved tensions and melodic statements. Themed on the notion of a journey, Highway Rider probes the confluence of the arbitrary and non-arbitrary in music, of balancing what is committed to the page with improvisation."

Crediting Brion with delivering "the exact combination of lush 1950s sounds and 1980s clarity that Mehldau wanted," Hobart concludes that the pianist/composer, "with his trust in his own experience, came through in spades, pulling his musical influences into orchestrated coherence, and communicating the fun he had in doing it."

You'll find the complete article at ft.com.

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Also in the UK, as noted last week in the Nonesuch Journal, the Guardian has already given the album a perfect five stars, calling it "the real deal" and saying it shows "how much progress the mesmerising improviser has made as a big-ensemble composer."

The Times of London has now given the album four stars, saying the album finds "the cerebral pianist at his most accessible." Reviewer John Bungey hears elements of Copland and Bernstein in the writing and concludes that Highway Rider makes for "an inspired set." Read the review at entertainment.timesonline.co.uk.

Metro UK recognizes that the "wunderkind" pianist/composer "is regularly credited with breathing new life into the traditional piano trio, not least by opening the format up to contemporary non-jazz influences such as Radiohead." The new album, writes reviewer Robert Shore, "finds the US keyboard whizz teamed up again with super-producer Jon Brion and spreading his wings as a composer and orchestrator." With so much going on, there is much to listen to, and, says Shore, "the effort is more than repaid." There's more at metro.co.uk.