Saturday Night, Sunday Morning With Brahmsian Reveries And John Cage

Last night at the Barbican the work received its European premiere. With the Britten Sinfonia, extra drummer Matt Chamberlain and saxophonist Joshua Redman plus Mehldau’s long standing trio partners Larry Grenadier and Jeff Ballard the work’s musical narrative knitted together remarkably well irrespective of the thematic road motifs and returning-home themes that Mehldau explained partly lay behind the story of the music.

Wearing what looked like a velour lounge jacket redolent of some bygone Bohemian parlour and noticeably enjoying himself, Mehldau even channelled his inner teenager at one point, stage grunting under his sleeve and exclaiming "Boring" when he explained that one of the Rider pieces was inspired by Brahms. After all, it was a jazz audience, hey, he seemed to be saying, although I think everyone knew that! Redman as “protagonist” was perfectly cast as hero and foil against the noted Goethe fan's role of rhapsodic continuity figure/miracle maker.

A very impressive London Jazz Festival debut. ‘Into the City’ above all showed some monstrous Mehldau trio interplay and ‘John Boy’ named for Brahms and the likeable, if a bit wet, character from The Waltons is a winningly lovely theme. We might be hearing more of this tune over the years, very possibly out of context. I liked the Ballard / Chamberlain / Grenadier / Redman / Mehldau arpeggiating rapport later on; while both on hand percussion and in a double-kit setting, Chamberlain and Ballard were a formidable double act. The at-times plangently impressive washes of strings and even the handsome bassoon parts added to the spell, sympathetically conducted by Mehldau pal Scott Yoo and of course Mehldau’s almost signature-level left hand figures, bouncing the right hand into some beautiful flourishes.

Later at the Vortex just a short bus ride away in Dalston after midnight there was a wonderful if unlikely end to the evening for me, with ‘Indeterminacy’, John Cage's diary-like witticisms and bon mots read by the fine comedian Stewart Lee, with Steve Beresford and Tania Chen playing improv on electronic devices and piano. Banal at times, absurdist even, with some superb abstract touches from Chen and the quietly amusing Lee deadpanning well-honed falling cadences it was quite a gem. “Artists talk a lot about freedom”, as Cage put it, and who would disagree. 

– Stephen Graham