Born on August 23, 1970 in Jacksonville, Florida; He currently resides in Amsterdam.
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra
Composed: 2018; Revised 2020
Estimated length: 20 minutes
For more than three decades, Brad Mehldau has been a major force in jazz. In 2023, The New Yorker called him “arguably the greatest working jazz pianist.” His musical upbringing was eclectic from the start. Mehldau’s first piano teacher encouraged improvisation, while later lessons gave him a strong classical foundation. Workshops introduced the teenage Mehldau to the music of John Coltrane and Miles Davis.
After spending much of his childhood in Connecticut, Mehldau entered the New School in New York at 18 and quickly became involved in the city’s jazz scene. Early in his career, he joined saxophonist Joshua Redman’s quartet before establishing his own trio with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy. The influential Art of the Trio recordings became central to his reputation. His trio programs could place a traditional jazz standard alongside songs by Radiohead or Nick Drake, with each becoming material for improvisation.
Classical concert music has also been part of Mehldau’s world for years. He has written for singers including soprano Renée Fleming, collaborated with orchestras and, as early as 2007, composed The Brady Bunch Variations for Piano and Orchestra. Later projects have ranged from music inspired by Bach and the French composer Gabriel Fauré to orchestral works of his own. NSO Music Director Leonard Slatkin calls him “one of the most thoughtful musicians out there in the jazz world.” The Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, premiered in 2018 with Mehldau as soloist and revised in 2020, brings these interests together.
In The Composer's Words
The first movement begins with a nod to Herbie Hancock’s 1965 jazz standard “Maiden Voyage;” its title, “(the voyage continues),” acknowledges the connection, as does Mehldau’s dedication of the entire concerto to Hancock “with respect and gratitude.” Mehldau explains that in his woodwind introduction he took a cue from Hancock’s opening, retaining something of its modal harmony—an approach centered on a particular scale or mode rather than driven by conventional chord changes—while building denser chords around it.
Much of the movement is in a “dreamy” 7/4 meter— seven beats to a measure—but Mehldau wants our awareness of that pattern partly to recede. As he puts it, listeners can sense the pulse without having to count it and “simply drift with the music.”
Mehldau calls the second movement “a little bow” to favorite dance movements such as “the fiery scherzos of Brahms.” Instead of the three-beat meter traditionally associated with a scherzo, he uses 5/8. He further blurs the meter by layering different rhythms and tempos in the piano—a technique he identifies with what jazz musicians call “metric modulation.” Mehldau points to Mahler’s Third and Ninth
Symphonies—both conclude with expansive slow movements—when discussing the slow tempo of his own finale. He also notes that for many years he has ended each jazz trio set with a ballad. Here, as Mehldau remarks, the language of late romanticism rubs against the vocabulary of the blues. More broadly, he regards the intersection of European art music and African American music as an important aspect of his work.
In addition to solo piano, scored for 2 flutes (2nd doubling alto flute), 2 oboes (2nd doubling English horn), 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 percussionists, harp, and strings.
− Thomas May is the Nashville Symphony's program annotator.
Featured on Rachmaninoff & Mehldau — September 25 & 26, 2026
Nashville Symphony
Kevin John Edusei, conductor
Brad Mehldau, piano
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