journal.nonesuch.com

Brad Mehldau Trio Brings "Beautiful, Arresting" Performance to Gilmore Festival

The Brad Mehldau Trio performed at the Gilmore Keyboard Festival this weekend in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It was the first time the Trio had played the event since 2000, and, writes William R. Wood in the Kalamazoo Gazette, "Mehldau was excellent at pulling people into his world."

In his review of the first of the Trio's two sets at the Gilmore, Wood says that "Mehldau and his group are all about telling stories, taking listeners on a journey filled with a landscape of tonal colors and vibrant rhythms." The Gazette review calls particular attention to an "unusual, beautiful, and arresting" solo from Brad on Irving Berlin's "Isn't This a Lovely Day," with the pianist's playing throughout the set "filled with great intelligence matched with dynamic feeling, a grand combination that hooked musicians and jazz fans in the audience as well as the curious and casual jazz listeners there."

To read the review, visit blog.mlive.com/kgazette.

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Click here to add the two-CD Live set directly to your Shopping Cart for $17, along with that album's MP3s at no additional charge.

Click here to add the Trio's Complete Friday Night Sets all-MP3 album---an additional three hours of music---to your Cart for $20.

Nonesuch Events This Weekend

Below are just some of the many events going on across the globe this weekend featuring Nonesuch artists:

The San Francisco Ballet will perform to John Adams's Son of Chamber Symphony (2007) each night this weekend in Mark Morris's new piece, Joyride, for the final nights of the Ballet's New Works Festival Program B, at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. "If you appreciate ballet that offers dazzlingly sophisticated musicality," says the San Francisco Chronicle, "then you could hardly do better than Mark Morris's Joyride." Tickets: sfballet.org.

The Thüringer Symphoniker, led by Oliver Weder, will pair Adams's Short Ride in a Fast Machine and Tromba Lontana for performances in Unterwellenborn, Germany, tonight and Saturday. Both pieces appear on the 1987 Nonesuch recording, The Chairman Dances. More info: boosey.com.

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Laurie Anderson continues her four-night residency at the Barbican in London through Saturday. Folks in the UK can catch Laurie on Later with Jools Holland tonight at 11:35 PM GMT, on BBC Two.

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Toumani Diabate will play a special concert in the intimate space of LSO St. Luke's in London, performing songs from his new solo CD, The Mande Variations, as part of the Barbican's Spring 08 Contemporary Events series.

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Bill Frisell's new quintet, featuring Chris Cheek on sax and clarinet, Larry Grenadier on bass, Ron Miles on cornet, and Rudy Royston on drums, will make its European debut on Sunday in Cheltenham, England's Everyman Theater as part of the Cheltenham Jazz Festival. Tickets: cheltenhamfestivals.com.

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Kronos Quartet plays its last US date of the season this Saturday before heading to Europe for the rest of May. The group will perform at Disney Hall in Los Angeles, with special guest Tanya Tagaq, for the LA premiere of their collaboration Nunavut and the world premiere of Derek Charke's Tundra Songs. (The Canadian Press has a profile of Tagaq, a throat singer from Arctic Canada, and Charke, a Nova Scotian composer, at canadianpress.google.com.) Kronos will also give the LA premiere of Tusen Tankar, the Nonesuch Store-exclusive bonus track on its latest release, The Cusp of Magic, and perform Sigur Rós's Flugufrelsarinn. Tickets: laphil.com.

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After making her way across Australia, k.d. lang returns to the Sydney State Theatre with her Watershed tour tonight and for a just-added second show, on Saturday, before heading to New Zealand next week.

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The Brad Mehldau Trio will perform two sets tonight at Western Michigan University's Williams Theater in Kalamazoo as part of the Gilmore Keyboard Festival's Jazz Club series. Tickets: thegilmoreiscoming.com.

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Friends of the Sheldon in St. Louis, Missouri, present Randy Newman at that city's Sheldon Concert Hall Sunday night for a concert to benefit the Hall's education programs, both in schools and at the venue. Tickets: thesheldon.org.

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Nicholas Payton, fresh off his performance at the New Orleans JazzFest last weekend, headlines the Main Street JazzFest in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on the festival's Main Stage Saturday at 7:30 PM. "Opportunities to see a jazz artist of Payton's caliber in the Middle Tennessee area are few and far between," says the Nashville Scene. All events are free and open to the public. For a complete schedule of events: mainstreetjazzfest.com.

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Punch Brothers' Chris Thile will play a late-night solo set at the Living Room on New York's Lower East Side at 11 PM Sunday night. Tickets: livingroomny.com.

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Steve Reich's 1994 piece for two marimbas, Nagoya Marimbas, will be performed tonight at the Royal Northern College of Music's Haden Freeman Concert Hall in Manchester, England, by the RNCM Percussion Ensemble's Ian Wright and Paul Patrick. On Satudray, the full, 46-minute version of the composer's Desert Music (1983), for amplified voices and orchestra, will be performed at Fairfield University's Quick Center in Connecticut, by New York's Shen Wei Dance Arts ensemble.

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Wilco will be in Winnipeg, Manitoba, tonight to play the Burton Cummings Theatre (named "one of Winnipeg's Seven Wonders" in a recent Winnipeg Free Press reader survey) and will head back south of the 49th parallel for a sold-out show at the Emerson Cultural Center in Bozeman, Montana, Sunday night.

Jazz.com Names New Nicholas Payton, Brad Mehldau Tracks as Songs of the Day

On his Nonesuch debut, Into the Blue, Nicholas Payton and his quintet offer a unique rendition of "Chinatown," from Jerry Goldsmith's score of the 1974 Roman Polanski film of the same name. Jazz.com reviewer Ralph A. Miriello singles out the tune as Song of the Day.

"Nicholas Payton unabashedly takes on this challenge and confidently navigates the song's bittersweet sensibilities," writes Miriello, "creating a sensuously delicious mood of sultry, slow-steamed blues blended with the mystery of a Raymond Chandler novel. Conjuring up a shadowy back alley, Payton luxuriates in the mood with a deeply evocative tonal range that remains sparse yet elicits great feeling."

The reviewer cites "Payton's sensitivity" as "a quality too rarely displayed by today's trumpeters" and finds the track to be "a wonderful vehicle for his artistry."

To read the complete Song of the Day review, visit jazz.com.

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The site recently named the Brad Mehldau Trio's version of Ray Noble's "The Very Thought of You," from the new Live CD, a Song of the Day as well, rating it 96/100. Reviewer Ted Gioia notes the pianist's deconstruction of the original, from "introspective trio ballad" through impressive, "fresh improvised lines" to "one of those surprising shifts that have become a specialty of this artist," all of which make the track "not just a novel approach to improvisation but a challenge to our very sense of jazz structure. You can't really compare this to jazz precedents. It sets its own."

That complete Song of the Day entry can also be found at jazz.com.

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Click here to add Nicholas Payton's Into the Blue CD directly to your Shopping Cart for $16, along with the album MP3s at no additional cost.

Click here to add the Brad Mehldau Trio's two-CD Live set directly to your Shopping Cart for $17, along with that album's MP3s at no additional charge.

Pop Matters: Mehldau Trio "Live" an "Impressive Showcase"

The Brad Mehldau Trio's new two-disc set, Live, was recorded during a weeklong residency the group played at New York's famed Village Vanguard in 2006. Reviewer Ron Hart, giving the album an 8 of 10 in Pop Matters, writes that "there's something about the sound of piano trio in that room that inspires monumental performance," and there may be no one who "understands that concept quite like Brad Mehldau."

Hart calls the latest offering from the Mehldau Trio, Brad's third live disc from the venue, an "impressive showcase" and "classic Mehldau through and through ... a well-hued balance between original and cover material." Where Live differs from Brad's previous outings recorded at the Vanguard, says Hart, can be seen in the "bolder choices in the tunes he tackled" this time around. While he still pays tribute "to the jazz gods," like Ray Noble, Jimmy Heath, and John Coltrane, 

it's when Mehldau does what's earned him a loyal following amongst the new generation of jazz aficionados, rearranging nuggets from our alt-rock youth in a post-bop motif, does Live earn its bragging rights as the piano man's strongest Village Vanguard album to date ... And it's in those moments where Mehldau earns his most rightful place on the stage of the last great American jazz club.

To read the full review, visit popmatters.com.

An additional three hours of music is available now as an album of MP3s exclusively in the Nonesuch Store. It contains the complete music from all three Friday night sets during the Trio's Vanguard residency. Friday's versions of just "Fit Cat" and "Secret Beach" appear on Live, so The Complete Friday Night Sets offers 13 additional tracks.

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Click here to add the two-CD Live set directly to your Shopping Cart for $17, along with that album's MP3s at no additional charge.

Click here to add the Trio's Complete Friday Night Sets all-MP3 album to your Cart for $20.

Nonesuch Events This Weekend

Below is information on just some of the many events going on this weekend across the globe featuring Nonesuch artists. Enjoy!

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Violinist Leila Josefowicz will join the Saint Louis Symphony, led by conductor Marin Alsop, for three performances of John Adams's The Dharma at Big Sur this weekend at Powell Hall in St. Louis. Also tonight, the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra led by Raymond Leppard will perform Adams's Violin Concerto at the Euskalduna Palace in Bilbao, Spain, featuring violinist Chlöe Hanslip, and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale RAI led by Trevor Pinnock will perform the composer's 1990 orchestration of Liszt's The Black Gondola, in Turin, Italy.

Saturday night, the San Francisco Ballet presents the Mark Morris Dance Group's Joyride, featuring Adams's Son of Chamber Symphony, at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, as part of the continuing New Works Festival.

Adams's Short Ride in a Fast Machine gets three playings this weekend: Saturday night at the Saenger Theater in Mobile, Alabama, by Scott Speck and the Mobile Symphony, and Bloomington High School in Bloomington, Indiana, by Jose Valencia and the Musical Arts Youth Orchestra; and Sunday night at Royal Albert Hall, London, by Mark Gooding and the Harrow Young Musicians Philharmonic.

More information: boosey.com.

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Kronos Quartet plays the last of three performances at the Mondavi Center at the University of California, Davis, tonight: John Cage's Thirty Pieces for String Quartet with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Tickets: mondaviarts.org.

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Laurie Anderson will bring Homeland to the Moscow International Performing Arts Center in Russia on Saturday. On Sunday night, Laurie will join the weekend-long Symposium on Sound, a gathering of scientists, performers, and artists, at Leiden University in the Netherlands, for a discussion of the event's theme of mutual influence between art and science, especially as it relates to sound. Info: veenfabriek.nl.

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T Bone Burnett continues his tour with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss at New Orleans' famed Jazz & Heritage Festival, aka Jazz Fest. The three are scheduled to take the Acura Stage this afternoon at 3:30 PM. Next, they'll head to Birmingham, Alabama, where they'll play the BJCC Arena Saturday night. Tickets: nojazzfest.com (4/25); bjcc.org (4/26).

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Bill Frisell closes out his two week residency at New York's Village Vanguard with performances all weekend. Playing with Bill are Chris Cheek on sax, Ron Miles on trumpet, Tony Scherr on bass, and Rudy Royston on drums. Tickets: villagevanguard.com.

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Satyagraha, Philip Glass's 1980 opera centered around Mahatma Gandhi's early years in South Africa, continues tonight at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The performance is sold out. More information: metoperafamily.org.

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Richard Goode will perform a free concert in New York City as part of the annual Free for All at Town Hall concert series. See the post in today's Nonesuch Journal for more information.

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Emmylou Harris takes the stage at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in downtown Nashville tonight for Premiere Evening, an annual fund-raising event to benefit the Center's educational and cultural programming. Tickets: tpac.org.

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k.d. lang's continues the Australian leg of her Watershed tour at the Entertainment Center in Adelaide Saturday night. Tickets: theaec.net.

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Brad Mehldau is in Quebec, Canada, tonight for a solo show at the Palais Montcalm. He returns to the States on Saturday for a performance with the trio with whom he recorded the new album Live at the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, and a Sunday night show at the Annenberg Center's Zellerbach Theater in Philadelphia. Tickets: palaismontcalm.ca (4/25); hop.dartmouth.edu (4/26); pennpresents.org (4/27).

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Youssou N'Dour will perform a special benefit concert tonight at New York's intimate venue Joe's Pub as part of a fund-raising effort for the Youssou N'Dour Foundation and his worldwide advocacy efforts. The acoustic set will be modeled on the smaller sets he leads at his club in Dakar. Tickets: joespub.com.

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Randy Newman will play a solo date tonight at the Riley Center at Mississippi State University's Meridian Campus. Tickets: msurileycenter.com.

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Nicholas Payton stays close to home for New Orleans' Jazz Fest. He and his quintet will take the stage in the WWOZ Jazz Tent at 4:05 PM on Sunday. Among the other performers at this year's festival are Stevie Wonder and Al Green, as well as Robert Plant and Alison Krauss with T Bone Burnett (see above). Tickets: nojazzfest.com.

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Steve Reich's Eight Lines will be performed by Ensemble Intercontemporain led by Ludovic Morlot tonight at Cité de la musique, Salle des concerts, in Paris.

Reich's Desert Music, will presented at the University of California, Berkeley, Saturday, as Drumming will be performed by percussionist Colin Currie at the Concert Hall in Perth, Scotland. Currie earned four stars in the Herald (UK) for his performance there earlier this week of Reich's Music for Pieces of Wood that "mesmerised." Also Saturday, the Smith Quartet brings the Triple Quartet to the Jacqueline du Pre Music Building in Oxford, England.

On Sunday, Reich's Cello Counterpoint will be performed at the Purcell Room in London by Endymion and his Vermont Counterpoint can be heard at Ford Hall at Ithaca College, with Melissa Wertheimer on flute.

More information: boosey.com

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The national tour of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, based on the 2005 Broadway production helmed by John Doyle, began its run at Chicago's Cadillac Palace Theatre early this week. Performances continue there through May 4. Tickets: sweeneytoddtour.com

Washington Post: Mehldau Offers "Imaginative, Expansive Performances" on New Live Discs

The Brad Mehldau Trio's 2-disc Live album comprises more than 2 1/2 hours of music, with "plenty of unexpected accents, contours and tangents," writes the Washington Post's Mike Joyce, that "should keep even die-hards content for a long time."

Among those particularly contoured pieces, the review points to the trio's rendition of Oasis's "Wonderwall," Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun," and John Coltrane's "Countdown." The risks Brad is willing to take when creating his "inventive interpretations" of these familiar tunes, Joyce concludes "ultimately pay off with imaginative, expansive and harmonically probing performances."

To read the review, visit washingtonpost.com.

An additional three hours of music is available now as an album of MP3s exclusively in the Nonesuch Store. It contains the complete music from all three Friday night sets during the Trio's weeklong residency at New York's Village Vanguard at which the Live CDs were recorded. Friday's versions of just "Fit Cat" and "Secret Beach" appear on Live, so The Complete Friday Night Sets offers 13 additional tracks.

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Click here to add the two-CD Live set directly to your Shopping Cart for $17, along with that album's MP3s at no additional charge.

Click here to add the Trio's Complete Friday Night Sets all-MP3 album to your Cart for $20.

Philadelphia Inquirer: Mehldau Grooves on Trio "Live" CDs

The Brad Mehldau Trio's two-disc Live album receives three and a half stars from the Philadelphia Inquirer. Reviewer Karl Stark writes:

It is way cool to follow the flights of pianist Brad Mehldau and his trio on this live two-disc recording. Laboring over six nights at New York's fabled Village Vanguard in October 2006, Mehldau proves he can weave a groove as well as anyone. It's satisfying to hear him pick intense lines in some remote corner of a long tune or pile on one note repeatedly, because his rhythmic drive is so strong.

To read the full review, visit philly.com.

Brad is set to perform a number of solo shows over the next couple of weeks, including one at the Annenberg Center's Zellerbach Theatre, in Philadelphia, this Sunday. For more tour information, click here.

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Click here to add the two-CD set Brad Mehldau Trio Live directly to your Shopping Cart for $17, along with that album's MP3s at no additional charge.

Click here to add the Trio's Complete Friday Night Sets all-MP3 album to your Cart for $20.

Boston Globe: Brad Mehldau Trio "Live" Shows "Finest Pianist" Expanding Horizons

Brad Mehldau recently released both the two-disc trio album Live, recording over a week's residency at New York's Village Vanguard, as well as a Nonesuch Store-exclusive all-MP3 album of the Complete Friday Night Sets. "In previous outings," writes the Boston Globe's Steve Greenlee in his review of Live, "Mehldau has displayed his prowess as an interpreter of standards, particularly within the trio. Here he expands his horizons considerably."

Greenlee calls attention to Brad's original works as well as the Trio's take on Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" and Oasis's "Wonderwall" (which he names an "essential" track) as examples of this broadening reach. "And all of it flows naturally from the hands of these gifted musicians," writes the reviewer.

"Bridging the worlds of postbop and impressionism," the Globe concludes, "Mehldau is one of the finest pianists jazz has ever seen. As such, he has allowed himself to develop without appearing to change much."

To read the full review, visit boston.com.

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Click here to add the 2-CD set Brad Mehldau Trio Live directly to your Shopping Cart for $17, along with that album's MP3s at no additional charge.

Click here to add the Trio's Complete Friday Night Sets all-MP3 album to your Cart for $20.

Mehldau Trio's "Wonderwall" Added to Stereogum "Gum Mix"

The Brad Mehldau Trio's performance of Oasis's signature song, "Wonderwall," from the Trio's recent two-disc Nonesuch release, Live, is the latest add to the Stereogum "Gum Mix." You can listen to the track in the Mix and download it from stereogum.com/mp3.

You can also listen to album excerpts of Mehldau's "Ruby's Rub" and "Buddha Realm" and Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" at nonesuch.com/bradmehldau.

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Click here to add the 2-CD set Brad Mehldau Trio Live directly to your Shopping Cart for $17, along with that album's MP3s at no additional charge.

Click here to add the Trio's Complete Friday Night Sets all-MP3 album to your Cart for $20.

Mehldau, Frisell, Redman to Play JVC Jazz NY, Part of "One of the More Promising Lineups" in Years (NY Times)

Brad Mehldau, Bill Frisell, and Joshua Redman will be among the participants in this year's JVC Jazz Festival New York, for which tickets went on sale today. The event will run from June 15 through 28 in multiple venues, including Carnegie Hall---hosting a broad range of artists like João Gilberto, Herbie Hancock, Al Green, and Mos Def---and a new venue, Le Poisson Rouge, programmed exclusively by Festival organizers, Festival Network.

Brad Mehldau will perform in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall on June 22. Bill Frisell's trio will perform at the new space, on June 19, as will Joshua Redman, on June 26 and 27, in performances with the band Soulive.

The New York Times' Ben Ratliff calls recent structural changes at the Festival organization one that left the event itself "undiminished and newly energized." He finds this year's programming "edging closer to a truer reflection of serious jazz, with one of the more promising lineups in recent years." To read his article on George Wein, the event's founder, and the 2008 Festival, visit nytimes.com.

For full program and ticket information, visit festivalnetwork.com.

Brad Mehldau Trio Live Is "A Beautifully Realized Album" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

The Brad Mehldau Trio is in St. Louis this week for a four-night residency at Jazz at the Bistro starting tonight. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Brad's latest album, the two-cd Live recording from the trio, is "clearly among his best."

The record captures highlights from a weeklong residency by the group at New York's Village Vanguard; it's in the live setting, writes Post-Dispatch reviewer Calvin Wilson, "that the pianist has tended to stretch out most imaginatively and impressively." Wilson calls the new collection, with tunes by Brad and a broad range of songwriters, from John Coltrane to Chris Cornell, "a beautifully realized album, by turns lyrical and rambunctious."

"As a jazz artist," Wilson asserts, "Mehldau has few peers. And in embracing the past without forsaking the present, he has acted on an impulse that has distinguished jazz from its inception."

To read the review, visit stltoday.com.

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Click here to add the 2-CD set Brad Mehldau Trio Live directly to your Shopping Cart for $17, along with that album's MP3s at no additional charge.

Click here to add The Complete Friday Night Sets MP3s to your Cart for $20.

NPR: Brad Mehldau Trio Live "Wonderwall" Is Song of the Day

The Brad Mehldau Trio's take on "Wonderwall," written by Noel Gallagher and first made famous by Oasis, is NPR's Song of the Day today. The track appears on the new Live album from the Trio---Mehldau, bassist Larry Grenadier, and drummer Jeff Ballard---which they recorded during a week's residency at New York's Village Vanguard. 

NPR contributor Michael Katzif writes that the three musicians

sound unusually lively and exploratory on the two-disc collection Brad Mehdlau Trio Live, and they seem to play with a greater-than-ever sense of urgency ... Live is the finest live recording Mehldau has made. Collected from a series of 2006 concerts, these performances return to what Mehldau and his band do best: conversational improvisation, with idiosyncratic arrangements that rethink the popular songbook.

You can listen to the complete "Wonderwall" track off the two-CD set at npr.org. You can hear excerpts from three other songs off the album at nonesuch.com/bradmehldau.

Another live version of "Wonderwall" by the Trio, from the second of three sets they played at the Vanguard that Friday night, appears on the MP3 album The Complete Friday Night Sets, available exclusively at the Nonesuch Store.

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Click here to add the 2-CD set Brad Mehldau Trio Live directly to your Shopping Cart for $17, along with that album's MP3s at no additional charge.

Click here to add The Complete Friday Night Sets MP3s to your Cart for $20.

Guardian: Four Stars for Brad Mehldau Trio "State-of-the-Art" Live Album

This week marked the release of the Brad Mehldau Trio's two-disc Live set, recorded during the group's weeklong residency at the Village Vanguard in October 2006; The Guardian (UK) gives four stars to the latest album from this "prodigiously gifted pianist" and his trio, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard. Reviewer John Fordham writes that Live offers what audiences have come to expect from Brad, namely "state-of-the-art contemporary jazz piano," or more specifically:

a new mix of standard songs and deconstructed pop themes; a new level of understanding within his group; a new twist on old piano-trio rules; and a startling new freedom in the way the pianist's left hand cajoles, threatens and encourages his right.

To read the complete review, visit music.guardian.co.uk.

Also available to fans around the world, exclusively through the Nonesuch Store, is an all-MP3 album of the complete recordings from the three Friday night sets of the Trio's 2006 Vanguard residency, including 15 tracks of works by Brad, Thelonious Monk, Benny Goodman, Paul Simon, and Radiohead.

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Click here to add the 2-CD set Brad Mehldau Trio Live directly to your Shopping Cart for $17, along with that album's MP3s at no additional charge.

Click here to add The Complete Friday Night Sets MP3s to your Cart for $20.

Financial Times Gives Four Stars to New Brad Mehldau Trio Live Album

Today marks the release of Brad Mehldau Trio Live, the new live 2-CD set capturing the Trio, including bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard, in its weeklong October 2006 residency at New York's historic Village Vanguard. The Financial Times gives the record four stars, calling the group's leader "brimful of ideas."

Reviewer Mike Hobart says the album "spins even the simplest structures of pop and indie-rock into fantasias of melodic poise and harmonic development" and finds it full of "fertile re-interpretations of Seattle grunge, bossa nova and the American songbook." To read the full review, visit ft.com.

Also available today, exclusively in the Nonesuch Store, is an all-MP3 album of the complete recordings from the three Friday night sets of that 2006 residency. The sets include 15 tracks of works by Brad, Thelonious Monk, Benny Goodman, Paul Simon, and Radiohead---over three hours of music---and are available as standard-sized 128 kbps MP3s or larger, audiophile-quality 320 kbps files for the same low price.

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Click here to add the 2-CD set Brad Mehldau Trio Live directly to your Shopping Cart for $17, along with that album's MP3s at no additional charge.

Click here to add The Complete Friday Night Sets MP3s to your Cart for $20.

All About Jazz: Mehldau Trio's "Live" 2-CD Set Is "Exceptional"

This Tuesday, March 25, the Brad Mehldau Trio, with Larry Grenadier on bass and Jeff Ballard on drums, will release the two-CD Live album, its first recording since Day Is Done, the group's 2005 Nonesuch debut. In the record review for All About Jazz, writer John Kelman finds Brad's already expansive "musical cosmopolitanism ... broadened even further."

Kelman points particularly to Mehldau's soloing on the group's 23-minute rendition of Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" as the moment when

the music enters territory freer than anything the trio has approached before. Its conversational aesthetic drives further shifts where delineated solos don't detract from the trio's undeniable democracy; rhythmic and harmonic migrations being so seamless as to feel preplanned when they are clearly spontaneous.

About the album, the review concludes:

It's the trio's increasing open-mindedness that distinguishes Live from its previous live outings. Refined simplicity contrasts with sophisticated complexity while spare economy coexists alongside busier dynamics, making Live another exceptional milestone in a career defined by gradual but unrelenting growth and exploration.

To read the full review, visit allaboutjazz.com.

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Click here to pre-order the two-cd Live album now, with the album MP3s available for download at no additional cost on Tuesday.

Brad Mehldau Earns Premio Blue Note Prize in Milan

Last Saturday in Milan, Brad Mehldau was awarded the fifth annual Premio Blue Note prize for the best in jazz and classical music. His trio, Larry Grenadier on bass and Jeff Ballard on drums, played four sold-out sets over two nights at the city's Blue Note club March 14 and 15.

Their forthcoming two-cd album, The Brad Mehldau Trio Live, out next Tuesday, features two-and-a-half hours of music selected from four nights at New York's Village Vanguard, with original tunes by Brad plus songs by John Coltrane, Chico Buarque, Oasis, and Soundgarden. With CDs purchased in the Nonesuch Store come MP3s of the album at no additional charge, available on release date. To pre-order now, click here.

Also available for purchase, exclusively from the Nonesuch Store, is an album of 15 MP3s of all three Friday-night sets the Trio played during that Vanguard residency, with more than three hours of music from start to finish. Among the MP3s are works by Brad, Thelonious Monk, Benny Goodman, Paul Simon, and Radiohead. To pre-order The Complete Friday Night Sets MP3s, available for download on March 25, click here.

Brad Mehldau to Curate Series at London's Wigmore Hall

London's Wigmore Hall has just announced that Brad Mehldau will curate an annual four-concert jazz series at the Hall during its 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons, with Brad appearing in at least two of the four annual concerts.

"Brad Mehldau is steeped in the classical music tradition and is one of the most fluid and inventive musicians that I have ever encountered," said the Hall's director, John Gilhooly, in a statement announcing the series. "We are very pleased and excited to welcome him to Wigmore Hall."

For more information on the upcoming series, visit wigmore-hall.org.uk.

Brad is currently on tour in Europe; click here for tour details. His forthcoming Nonesuch album, Brad Mehldau Trio Live, is set for release on March 25 and will be available for pre-order in the Nonesuch Store next week.

Brad Mehldau Trio Heads to Europe After "Masterful" Salt Lake City Show

Brad Mehldau and his trio---Larry Grenadier on bass and Jeff Ballard on drums---played to a full house in Salt Lake City earlier this week for their final Stateside performance before heading to Europe early next month. Salt Lake City's Deseret Morning News reports that "nobody in the capacity crowd went home disappointed." Writes reviewer Larry D. Curtis:

The beauty of the trio ... was on full display Monday, as each of the three musicians was allowed to show off his considerable skills without the audience losing awareness of what the rest of the group was doing ... Part of the magic was how effortless the playing looked and how masterful it sounded.

To read the complete review, visit deseretnews.com.

Nonesuch will release a live record from the trio on March 25 and returns to the States for further touring in April. For tour information, click here.

Nonesuch Artists Take Manhattan (and Brooklyn, Too) This Sunday

With the Brad Mehldau Trio's weeklong residency at New York's Village Vanguard well under way and running through Sunday, the city will also be playing host to performances by a number of Nonesuch artists this weekend.

Sérgio and Odair Assad will perform in both sessions of Sunday's Brazilian Guitar Marathon concert, a two-part, multi-artist event they co-curated. The Marathon begins at 2 PM at the 92nd Street Y and will be hosted by John Schaefer of WNYC radio. The event is part of the nearly monthlong New York Guitar Festival, which has presented more than 200 of the world's greatest guitarist since 1999, including Bill Frisell (who'll be performing upstate instead this Sunday at Peekskill's Paramount Center for the Arts) and Emmylou Harris (who'll be at Michigan's Folk Fest finishing up her tour with Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin, and Buddy Miller). For more information on the Brazilian Guitar Marathon, visit newyorkguitarfestival.org.

Playing later Sunday afternoon on the west side of town is Richard Goode, who performs works by Bach, Chopin, Beethoven, Debussy, and Fauré at the Rose Theater as part of Lincoln Center's Great Performers events and its Virtuoso Recitals series. For further program and ticket information, visit lincolncenter.org.

Even with subway trains running on a weekend schedule, that should leave enough time for folks to head down to Brooklyn's Union Hall in Park Slope for Laura Veirs's set at 9:30 PM. Advance tickets are sold out, but a limited number of tickets will be available at show time. For more information, visit unionhallny.com.

And as always, you can find the dates and locations of Nonesuch artists' tours throughout the world on nonesuch.com by clicking the Tours button at the right.

Brad Mehldau to Play a Week of NYC Shows

This past Saturday, Brad Mehldau kicked off a week of New York City shows with a sold-out solo gig at Washington Irving High School that was part of the People's Symphony Concerts' Artists' Series. The New York Times includes the event in a starred listing for Brad, whom the paper's Nate Chinen calls "one of the standout jazz voices of his generation." Up next is a series of twice-nightly sets, Tuesday through Thursday, at the Village Vanguard (limited ticket availability), featuring Brad's "exceptionally good trio" with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard.

Also in this week's Times listings is a concert this Thursday at John Zorn's East Village club, The Stone, by guitarist Marc Ribot, who plays on the Black Keys' forthcoming Nonesuch release, Attack & Release. He'll be joined by Laurie Anderson for the later of two sets this Thursday. For more information, visit thestonenyc.com.

To read this week's Times jazz listing, visit nytimes.com.

Santa Barbara Independent: Bill Frisell This Week's Show of the Week

The Santa Barbara Independent takes advantage of the start of the New Year to combine the paper's list of the best of last year with a look at the best of what's to come. There Will Be Blood is among the best films of 2007, and among the city's best live shows last year, the Independent's Josef Woodard lists both Wilco's concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl in support of Sky Blue Sky and the Pat Metheny / Brad Mehldau Quartet gig at Campbell Hall.

For this week's Show of the Week, Woodard names Bill Frisell's return to the city's Lobero Theatre, where "the always intriguing and poetic guitarist" will perform on Saturday with drummer Joey Baron. Woodard recalls Bill's 2004 performance at the Lobero as "one of the more enchanted musical encounters in the long history" of the Theatre, and says that Frisell "continues to surprise and delight," citing the guitarist's "dynamic" 2006 Nonesuch release with the "inspired" Ron Carter and Paul Motian.

To read the article, visit independent.com. For more information on Bill's show this Saturday, visit lobero.com.

Daily Telegraph: Mehldau Among Top 20 Talents of 2008

Brad Mehldau is one of the top 20 talents to watch in 2008, according to The Daily Telegraph (UK). Graham Sheffield, artistic director of the Barbican Centre in London, writes in the Telegraph that Mehldau "seems to be one of the most distinctive and creative musicians right across the board." Sheffield recognizes both Mehldau's "great jazz pedigree" and that the pianist "is forging his own style." With a major residency for Brad at the Barbican in the works for this summer, the Centre's artistic director predicts the musician "is about to become a big star in his own right."

You can read the complete article at telegraph.co.uk. Look for Brad's next Nonesuch release in the coming months.

Contra Costa Times: Redman, Mehldau at SFJAZZ Among Year's Best Concerts

It was a powerhouse line-up when SFJAZZ gathered Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride, and Brian Blade at San Francisco's Herbst Theatre with a tribute to Thelonius Monk on May 4 of this year, so it's no surprise that Jim Harrington in the Contra Costa Times says it was one of the best jazz concerts of the year. To read what Harrington has to say about the year's best sets, visit contracostatimes.com.

NPR Music: Year's Best Include Many Nonesuch Arists

NPR's music programs and reviewers are turning in their lists for the Best of 2007, and a number of Nonesuch artists are among the top choices from public radio.

Wilco's Sky Blue Sky tops World Cafe's list of the best albums of the year. Writes the show's host, David Dye: "As the year progresses, it's remarkable when an album from earlier in the year has staying power." But for Dye, Sky Blue Sky proves that it can be done.

For the complete World Cafe list, click here.

Banning Eyre, the music reviewer for All Things Considered and the senior editor at afropop.org, has three Nonesuch artists on his list of the Top Ten of 2007: Caetano Veloso, an artist "of Dylan-esque stature," with the album Cê; the "legendary" Sérgio and Odair Assad, whose Jardim Abandonado showcases their mastery at turning music from any genre into "a thing of warmth and perfection in their hands"; and Youssou N'Dour who sings on Rokku Mi Rokka (Give and Take) with "one of the most inspiring and vital voices in pop music anywhere today."

For Eyre's Top Ten, click here.

NPR's member stations are also weighing in with their pics. On the list for "Top Ten Jazz Jewels of 2007" from WDUQ in Pittsburgh is the Metheny/Mehldau Quartet record. And Wilco's "Hate It Here," from Sky Blue Sky, is among the best songs of the year, according to Austin station KUT's music director, Jeff McCord. He calls the song "a simple tune so slyly infectious that the CDC has their eye on it ... Wilco has made one of its finest albums to date. And that’s saying a lot."

For WDUQ's list of the best in jazz, click here. For the KUT song list, click here.

You can listen to tracks from each of the albums and songs on the list by clicking on the links above or by visiting npr.org.

Frisell, Mehldau in New Photo Book with Intimate Look at Jazz World

Just in time for the holidays, famed jazz photographer Jimmy Katz has published Jazz Katz: Jazz in NY, a collection of black-and-white photos that All About Jazz calls "a feast for the eyes." The book featuring jazz luminaries, including Brad Mehldau and Bill Frisell, on stage and behind the scenes. For more information, visit allaboutjazz.com.

Brad Mehldau to Play SFJAZZ Spring Season

SFJAZZ has announced the line-up for its ninth annual spring season, and the Brad Mehldau Trio is on the bill. The new season, which runs from March 6 through June 20, includes a performance by Brad and his trio on June 6 at San Francisco's Herbst Theatre June 6. For details, visit sfjazz.org.

Richard Goode, Audra McDonald, Brad Mehldau to Perform at Gilmore Festival

The schedule for the 2008 Gilmore Keyboard Festival has been released, and among the artists on the bill for the biannual event are Richard Goode, Audra McDonald, and the Brad Mehldau Trio. The Festival will be held April 24–May 13, in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Richard Goode will perform a special prelude recital on April 13, just before the rest of the festival gets under way, with works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and Debussy. On May 8, Audra will perform a vocal recital, backed by a jazz trio, interpreting songs from an ecclectic range of songwriters from Randy Newman to Rodgers & Hammerstein and the Gershwins. Brad and his trio—bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy—will perform two sets on May 2 as part of the Festival's Jazz Club series.

For complete program and ticket information, visit thegilmoreiscoming.com.

Guardian Names 1,000 Must-Hear Albums (Part 1: A-M)

With iPods now holding up to 160 gigabytes of your favorite music, it might not be such a bad idea to start thinking of the 1,000 or so albums you just can't live without. Or, as the Guardian (UK) has put it, the 1,000 albums you must hear before you die. All this week, the Guardian is revealing, day by day, the records its music team thinks are must-hears "before you shuffle off your mortal coil."

Out so far on the list, released alphabetically by artist, are groups A through M. Here's some of what the Guardian's music mavens had to say about the Nonesuch albums they included:

• Amadou & Mariam: Dimanche à Bamako (2005) "This husband-and-wife rhythm and blues pairing from Mali were already huge in France before they added even more sparkle by hiring Manu Chao as producer. A sublimely paced record of pedal-to-the-metal acceleration and relaxed, freewheeling charm."

• Laurie Anderson: Big Science