Brad Mehldau ‘Highway rider’ live at the Barbican November 2010

This year’s London Jazz festival has a whole host of talent on display and it’s good to see that audiences are attending despite seasonal weather and tube train disruption. Last night at the Barbican Centre was the European premiere of Brad Mehldau’s epic ‘Highway rider’. ‘Highway Rider’ is a two disc concept album which was released earlier this year, which I suppose represents some kind of ‘fusion’ between Classical and Jazz, due to its use of a chamber orchestra for seven of its tracks. The very mention of ‘fusion’ will undoubtedly make many musicians and listeners run a mile and that’s looking from both genre’s respective corners! However, ‘Highway Rider’ never seems to compromise, the chamber orchestra sections are effective, at times, sounding Coplandesque, Ivesian, with a real ‘American classical’ tradition, when the piano plays at the same time it’s almost like listening to a modern piano concerto at times. When the orchestra don’t play, the jazz is there, with a fine mixture of styles coming from Brad Mehldau and his trio (Larry Grenadier on Bass and Jeff Ballard on Drums). In addition there is an extra percussionist, Matt Chamberlain, and the fantastic Sax playing of Joshua Redman.

The orchestra for the performance was the Britten Sinfonia, conducted by Mehldau’s school friend, Scott Yoo. The unusual orchestration, by Mehldau, consisted of 23 string players, three french horns, 1 bassoon, 1 contra bassoon and 1 percussionist (Orchestral bells). Mehldau sites Richard Strauss’s ‘Metamorphosen’, also for 23 strings as an influence here. As we in the audience were told, we were the ‘guinea pigs’ for the European tour which is taking place with the Britten Sinfonia over the next week or so and they had only previously had one day of rehearsals altogether. All things considered, the orchestra played very well, it can’t be easy for the strings sustaining 23 solo lines at times, also for the wind and brass players, to go for long stretches without playing, before coming back in, there were some nice solo lines, in particular the two bassoonists,  who had key roles at times. It was also interesting to see the response from the orchestra players to the numbers which were ‘pure jazz’, some looks of admiration during the complex ostinati patterns of ‘Into the City’.

The performance itself was outstanding, Mehldau played the whole of the first half without a score, with his usual right and left hand dexterity, it was good to hear the changes in the improvised sections from the solos on the album, with Mehldau and Redman both in creative mood. Also of note was the rapport between Grenadier and Ballard in the trio numbers. One of the more interesting features of this work is the use of percussion, ranging from hand claps, hand-made percussion to two drum kits playing at once for the ‘monster rock’ moments, visually this was good to watch and the performers were clearly having a good time. Three changes I noticed from the album were, the absence of pump organ in ‘Sky turning grey’ , the omission of the track ‘Come with me’ from the second half and no vocals in ‘The falcon will fly again’.

Brad Mehldau spoke twice in the concert, to introduce the pieces and players, he seemed a little conscious about having to speak for a length of time and even said ‘boring’ at one point when talking about his own piece’s homage to the work of Brahms. He also mentioned that the title of the first number, ‘John boy’ was a reference to Johannes Brahms, a point he made earlier this year in his solo recital at the Wigmore hall, he also went on to again clarify that it was also a ‘nod’ towards the character from ‘The Waltons’, this time however he went further with his description, remembering a particular episode when John boy left the home and returns like a ‘prodigal son’, a little like ‘Highway rider’s’ musical narrative with its cyclic feel and the idea of ‘returning home’.

At the end of the concert, the performers received a standing ovation from many in the audience and repeated calls back to the stage resulted in an encore from Mehldau, this time not one of his own compositions but a solo piano performance of ‘Martha my dear’. A fantastic concert that I would love to watch again or have on DVD (Mr Mehldau if you’re reading!)

Advertisement