Brad Meldhau Beatles

Pianist Brad Mehldau blew up in the mid-’90s playing intense renditions of Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hammerstein, and the like, but he’s also famously covered rock and pop fare including Radiohead, Alice in Chains, Neil Young, Rush, and indeed The Beatles. But here is Mehldau going all in, at peak expressive form and technical command, alone with a phenomenal instrument in a superb-sounding hall (Philharmonie de Paris), offering an emotionally invested all-Beatles programme (save for one David Bowie anthem at the end). The song order flows beautifully. Mehldau opens up the forms, cannily orchestrates the melodies, departs in fascinating ways from the harmonies, in the end keeping it all about the song. The emphasis is generally later Beatles (“I Am the Walrus,” “She Said, She Said,” and “Golden Slumbers” are inspired picks), but Mehldau’s boogie-woogie treatment of “I Saw Her Standing There” takes it back—it’s him convincingly flexing pre-bebop stylistic muscles while finding openings for his own creative language to come through.

Brad Mehldau did an exceptional job of keeping his stellar trio together for seven years, as proven by his fine Art of the Trio dates and 2004's Anything Goes. But Jorge Rossy, the group's drummer, began spending more and more time away from music and at his home in Spain. Mehldau, who is almost prolific in his recording process, recruited drummer Jeff Ballard to replace Rossy on Day Is Done.

Brad Mehldau's warm, utterly enveloping effort, 2016's Blues and Ballads, finds the pianist leading his trio through a set of well-curated standards and covers. The album follows up his genre-bending 2014 collaboration with electronic musician Mark Guiliana, Mehliana: Taming the Dragon, and smartly showcases his return to intimate acoustic jazz. Admittedly, the title, Blues and Ballads, is somewhat misleading, as Mehldau only tackles one actual blues with his jaunty, off-kilter take on Charlie Parker's "Cheryl." Otherwise, the blues of the title is implied more in the earthy lyricism of a handful of ballads. An influential figure in the jazz world since the late '90s, Mehldau has subtly transformed not only the way modern jazz is played, but also the repertoire from which musicians draw inspiration…