One of my favourite Brad Mehldau albums is still his first Warner album ‘Introducing Brad Mehldau’. He was only 25 when he recorded it and it has a lovely fresh feel without the sometimes overly-cerebral tone of his later albums (brilliant though they are).
This is a transcription of his solo on the opening track and demonstrates the brilliant quick-silver imagination and rhythmic devices that he’d explore further down the line in his career. Enjoy!
- Brad Mehldau – It Might As Well Be Spring (with reference MP3, 6.5MB zip file)
2 Comments
Thanks for putting this up – fascinating and well worth a detailed study.
I’m more familiar with his later stuff but nice to see that a possible trend towards self-indulgence manifested itself in his first album too. Why play a standard in 4/4 when you can play it in 7/8?
Interesting point Dan – I guess jazz musicians always have a slight tendancy towards that I guess. That was always one of the reasons why I was never a massive fan of Dave Brubeck (as fine a musician as he is)
Dan