Anyone interested in hearing all of jazz pianist Brad Mehldau's interpretations of Radiohead tunes? Mehldau is a classically-trained pianist whose biggest inspiration is Bill Evans, and it shows in his playing, which is an intriguing combination of the swinging jazz style piano and the much more rigidly structured classical style he's trained in. He's absolutely one of the most important voices in jazz today, and he's made a frequent habit of making his own spin on Radiohead over the past 5 years or so. I've put together a small mix after reading this thread here for anyone who might be curious. Here's what's included:

Knives Out (from his most recent album, Day is Done)
Three takes of Paranoid Android (one a 9 minute solo piece only available on a promo I have, the second a full-band version from his amazing Largo album, and the third a 20 minute live solo version from Live in Tokyo - they're all very different from each other and all very cool)
Exit Music (for a Film) (from Art of the Trio, Vol. 4)
Everything in its Right Place (from Anything Goes)

Anyone interested please PM me.

Have heard the last two, and they both rule. Cool mix idea, Mot!

Pee Emm U

i've heard some of what you're offering, and i remember enjoying it immensely. good work.

Yeah, his Android from Largo is very cool.

brad meldhau is one of my favorite artists. i simply love the new album.

It didn't work for me, mostly because I'm not sufficiently familiar with Radiohead. So I put that disk on the backburner, and reminded myself that I need to listen to Radiohead more.

There was another guy who put out two records of Radiohead piano jazz freakouts. At this point, it's a little gratuitous, although Mehldau garners respect from me.

Time to move on, people. And as a Radiohead fan, this rankles me a bit. I enjoy Yorke's piano stuff, but it's nowhere on par compositionally with Evans, Brubeck, et al. All this does is further canonizes Rhead a little prematurally in my opinion. Let them write some more good songs before institutionalizing them.

That's Christopher O'Riley. I don't own the albums in question, but I've heard parts of the first one and thought it was okay, not something I'd buy, but it was at least respectable.


Well, that's the thing - Mehldau's using the Radiohead tunes as jumping off points. Where he takes them is, more often than not, breathtaking. The 20 minute live version of "Paranoid Android" is truly stupendous - he's broken down the melody and slowly rebuilds around it, alternating around the familiar chords for several minutes and then slowly reconstructing the "basic" melody - and then he takes it into space from there once he's established a firm foothold in the song. That's what utilizing a standard ("new standard" or not, I'm simply using this as an example) is about - it's a vehicle for the artist's creativity. That he's chosen Radiohead says a lot about what he thinks their music has to offer him as a launching platform - it offers a very different color than you normally hear from covers of popular songs in the jazz realm.

My only concern with Mehldau is getting stuck in a rut of doing Radiohead tunes - I hear what inspires him in it, but it could easily look like a gimmick to outsiders. Really, I'd like to see more of his own material, like much of Largo and all of Places. Covers are great, they're a staple of jazz, but he's a very creative composer in his own right.

Damn, I need to track down that two-disc soundboard Mehldau bootleg I have. It's somewhere mixed in among hundreds (not kidding) of other bootlegs that got disorganized in a recent move . . .

Okay, I was definitely confusing Chris with Brad.

I most certainly would be interested in this endevour. If I knew how to PM you I would be doing so right now.

why didn't i see this before?

pm sent.