Brad Mehldau Trio
Where Do You Start

The artist sees the world from a different perspective (sometimes even invents it) compared to those around them; their gaze and perception of the other, the non-conformist, have been the fulcrum for centuries that has led to innovation and progress in so-called civil society. The culture of art has shown the public hidden and deep needs, highlighting concealed desires and developing new ones, as the task of the creator is essentially to reveal to others how much creativity and human abilities can merge to give life to something new and pure, far from the cold logic of the consumer market and increasingly akin to that abstract and ancient concept known to us as "beauty."

One could discuss for hours the empirical meaning of "beauty," a topic that fascinates and involves disciplines that go well beyond the written word, traversing the warmth of oratory to then slowly glide into the apparent coldness of mathematical analysis and economics, but this review is certainly not the most suitable space to discuss all this, both because of the complexity of the subject and due to my limited knowledge, entirely insufficient to delve with the right depth into a terrain so rough and full of layers that have settled over the centuries. That said, you'll ask me at this point: then why all this preamble just to say you're too ignorant to continue? A fair question that indeed makes no sense, to which I would like to answer very simply: listening to the new work of the Brad Mehldau Trio, with the emblematic title "Where Do You Start," I became even more convinced that a musical proposal quite bare from the point of view of instrumentation (we are in the classic jazz ensemble composed of: piano, double bass, and drums) can hide within itself a truly unique beauty and pathos, especially in a historical moment where music is greatly sacrificed in favor of an exasperated and exasperating aesthetic. In my opinion, this is precisely the essence of the existence of certain formations, in fact, besides producing excellent music (but here we are in the realm of the obvious: like saying water quenches thirst), musicians of such caliber and experience live their art in a dimension that transcends modern times itself.

Think about what a pop concert (but not only) would be without electricity: it couldn't exist! With this, I certainly don't want to deny the beauty of a well-amplified and distorted electric guitar, or that ethereal dream flavor that can be released by a well-played and dosed synthesizer, rather what I want to highlight concerns the way certain records can truly be a bridge between past and present, considering that: on the one hand, a work by the Mehldau Trio can comfortably dispense with the presence or absence of an electric source (the latter understood more generally as a symbol of the modern world), while on the other, our repertoire draws heavily from a very current musicality, one thinks of the various reinterpretations (note: I deliberately did not use the term covers!) of tracks belonging to bands like Oasis, Radiohead, Soundgarden, etc... And here I reconnect to the initial theme, that of the empirical experience of "beauty," the ability to lose oneself in sounds drawing from a roaring and powerful present, born of the innovation and progress that have troubled and animated the entire twentieth century, but at the same time lose themselves in a sense of the acoustic and aesthetics proper to the past of art, where the creative laboratory was not a recording studio, but rather a sheet of paper, a pen, and a strong desire to go beyond, as far as the staff and fingers allowed.

The surprising awareness of walking a tightrope with the world of today on one side and the past on the other: this is the feeling that every time I listen to a record like "Where Do You Start," a work that can be considered complementary to the previous "Ode," since, if in the latter we had all new compositions with a "celebratory" intent, we now find ourselves facing the inverse operation: honoring the past to celebrate the present and vibrancy of one's music. There is really a lot of Jazz in this work and of fine quality, the interplay is at stellar levels and Brad Mehldau's pianism seems even more lyrical and imaginative thanks to an impressive rhythm section (Larry Grenadier on bass and Jeff Ballard on drums), which dialogues with the leader in a precise and effective manner, chasing its sounds and caressing its poetics. Much more could be said, I could tell you how pleasant it is to listen to tracks like "Jam" (the only original composition on the album, the rest are remodulations) or "Got Me Wrong," but what would be the point? The only thing I can do is to recommend listening, to take a break and savor every note of the new release from the Brad Mehldau Trio, then you can tell me if I were right or not.

Today, dreamers pay a high price for the tricks of their hearts; there are those who want us to believe that there is nothing out there anymore, that the world now belongs to those who resign themselves to not being, but I refuse to believe it! For seventy-eight minutes, I heard the sound of good music and great art, two things that, although rare, still give hope for a different and perhaps better future. Brad Mehldau Trio: Brad Mehldau: piano; Larry Grenadier: bass; Jeff Ballard: drums.