BRAD MEHLDAU – REVERIES, SONG BOOKS & WORLD PREMIERE

At a festival centred on the piano as a universal instrument, neither Bach nor jazz can be absent. Brad Mehldau brings both together in his recital at Le Piano Symphonique. The pianist and composer is one of the defining jazz pianists of the present day.

The proximity between Bach’s music and jazz has often been described. Brad Mehldau approaches it not as a stylistic quotation, but as an attitude: through form, counterpoint, freedom and the art of opening entire worlds with just a few lines.

With Fourteen Reveries, Mehldau deliberately turned to shorter, concentrated forms. These Reveries are daydreams that can lead away from the banality of everyday life or lift off into melancholy. In them, the piano becomes an instrument of memory, suspension and poetic concentration.

Commissioned by Le Piano Symphonique, The Fifteenth Reverie is a new work that will receive its world premiere in Lucerne. With it, Mehldau continues the idea of the Reveries for the festival.

The second act reveals another side of this artist through excerpts from the album Song Books. Brad Mehldau has also translated songs by bands such as the Beatles, Nirvana and Radiohead into his own jazz idiom. Here, pop culture, improvisation and pianistic refinement meet – opening the festival towards a sound world between Bach, jazz and song.