The past few days have been a literal dream come true: rehearsing with Brad Mehldau alongside the Frankfurt Radio Big Band. Brad has long been one of my biggest heroes, and he has been an absolute delight to work with; I know my inspiring colleagues in the Frankfurt Radio Big Band feel the same way. Our performances are happening March 5 and 6 at the hr-Sendesaal in Frankfurt, and on Saturday, March 14 at the stunning Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.
I’d like to say a few words about my process for arranging the music for this project. The art of arranging is, in my experience, not very well understood. Many listeners seem to use the term “arranging” more or less synonymously with “writing parts for a lot of instruments,” but the essence of arranging is not in the number of players involved, but in the craft of tailoring: of taking an existing piece of music and giving it a new silhouette. My favorite arrangements are the ones that spark the twin joys of recognition and surprise, artfully paired: the feeling of running into an old friend dressed in a sharp new outfit. (As opposed to, say, one who has undergone a dramatic but gaudy makeover.)
As an arranger, I strive for a made-to-measure fit: after all the cutting, hemming, stitching, and reweaving is done, the chart should feel like a bespoke garment, an elegant addition to the composer’s wardrobe. That last part is crucial — it should feel like it belongs in their closet, not mine! I don’t want to impose my own style so aggressively that you don’t see the person behind the clothes.
Before I undertake a big arranging project like this one, I like to immerse myself in the composer’s body of work. For jazz artists, this means not just their compositions, but their language as an improviser; I try to get inside their head. With Brad Mehldau, I had a head start: I’ve been trying to get inside his head for decades.
As an impressionable college freshman, I was fortunate enough to hear Brad live with the now-legendary MoodSwing quartet (Joshua Redman, Christian McBride, Brian Blade, and Brad) in early 1994, a few months before the album was released. Like everyone else in the room, I was immediately transfixed by Brad’s playing: the touch, the spontaneous melodic invention, the fluent left-hand counterpoint, the rhapsodic over-the-barline flow, the unencumbered swing even at impossibly fast tempos. It’s musical encounters like these, the ones that grab hold of us in our formative years, that end up rippling continuously through the rest of our lives.
In addition to being a magnificent player, Brad is also himself a supremely thoughtful arranger. Though he may not always be recognized in that capacity, I absolutely love the inspired choices he makes, particularly when he adapts material outside of the jazz canon. Whether he’s arranging Lennon-McCartney, David Bowie, Nick Drake, Radiohead, Bach, Fauré, or Elliot Smith, it all feels expertly tailored, made with tremendous affection for (and insight into) the original material. I have tried to bring that same care and acuity to these tunes, which are some of my favorite compositions in Brad’s expansive body of work.
“London Blues,” from Introducing Brad Mehldau (1995), was a natural starting point: it’s a trio tune done in a big band style. As with, for instance, John Lewis’s “Two Bass Hit,” the rhythmically intricate stop-time hits are a fundamental part of the composition, which eventually releases into an unfettered 12-bar blues. The much brisker tempo heard on Art of the Trio 4: Back at the Vanguard (1999) is also referenced here, because, as an arranger, why limit yourself to just one?
“Ron’s Place,” a melancholy waltz from The Art of the Trio Volume One (1997), with its yearning melodic leaps and deceptive harmonic resolutions, is a longtime personal favorite. It’s not the kind of piece that lends itself to a traditional big band “shout chorus,” but after the solos, we hear a tutti passage of interwoven contrapuntal lines inspired by Brad’s own solos.
The closing track from Songs: The Art of the Trio Volume Three (1998), “Sehnsucht,” is a frequent inclusion in Brad’s live sets. The wistful melody manages to somehow be both gauzily dreamlike and strikingly anthemic; it has a floating quality that belies the bright tempo. My arrangement leans into these ambiguities.
Originally from 1999’s Elegiac Cycle — Brad’s first solo piano record, and his first album to feature his own compositions exclusively, “Resignation” is pensive but not gloomy, with a determinedly rising bridge. This arrangement is particularly inspired by the live rendition from Live in Marciac: I took Brad’s opening ostinato and used it as a jumping-off point, rescoring it for clarinets and bass clarinets, with a tip of the hat to Steve Reich’s New York Counterpoint.
“29 Palms” is the name of an actual town in San Bernardino, California (population: 28,056) located at the gateway to Joshua Tree National Park, and is one of the locations name-checked in Brad’s 2000 release Places. (In the liner notes, he writes “At a loss for song titles, I started naming them after wherever they were written.”) The tune is a soulful 5/4 romp, originally recorded as a solo piano piece, but here given the widescreen VistaVision treatment.
The beloved 2010 double album Highway Rider yielded two selections: the opening track, “John Boy,” and a duet with Joshua Redman, “Old West.” Both are examples of Brad’s uncanny ability to tap deep into American folkloric music and German Romanticism, to pair direct-to-the-heart melodies with bracingly chromatic voice-leading. (“Is that really the chord he’s playing there?” is a question I found myself asking a lot.)
The arrangement of “John Boy” is quite faithful to the original, although, lacking French horns, I instead asked the Frankfurt Radio Big Band’s trombone section to pull out their euphoniums. My treatment of “Old West” is inspired by Allen Toussaint’s timeless arrangements for The Band’s 1972 live album Rock of Ages — the horn section is all New York jazzers, many of them drawn from the ranks of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra. (In the archival video, you can see Allen Toussaint conducting from the wings.)
“Aquaman” is from Brad’s 2012 trio release Ode, and yes, it’s about the DC Comics superhero — specifically the version from the Super Friends, a staple of Saturday morning TV in the 70s and 80s. Aquaman may have lacked the epic grandeur of Superman, the Gothic tragedy of Batman, or the mythic resonance of Wonder Woman, but, as Brad writes, “I dug Aquaman because he kept a lower profile and could talk to dolphins.” The cartoons of this era, Super Friends included, had wonderful music, played by first-rate studio players. In this arrangement, I tried to evoke the childhood thrill of getting up early on Saturday morning, fixing myself a bowl of cereal, and tuning into the adventures of my favorite heroes.
With “Father,” from 2020’s Round Again, we come full circle, to the reunion of the classic Redman-Mehldau-McBride-Blade quartet that made such an impression on me over thirty years ago. In “Father,” Brad uses one of my very favorite arranging devices: have the bass double the melody! (Memorably employed by Thad Jones on “Three and One.”) “Father” is a lively swing tune in 3/4, with the occasional 2/4 stutter step, built on leaping melodic dyads. The tune closes with a hypnotic extended coda, at first employing a bisected 5/4, then flowing into a trance-like sequence of mixed meters.
As a musical tailor, I could not have asked for finer material to work with. My deepest gratitude to the players in the hr-Bigband for all their toil and talent, and most of all to Brad for letting me adorn him for this special occasion.
DJA arrangements performed by the New York Philharmonic with Cécile McLorin Salvant