This solo piano recording was made by Elan Mehler in New Orleans on the eve of the 2020 pandemic.

The Boston-born, New York-based musician, bandleader, record producer and label co-founder (the esteemed Newvelle Records) had travelled down to the Crescent City to record the great Ellis Marsalis.

Finding himself in an empty studio, he sat down at the piano and began to play… Trouble in Mind is a mixture of standards and originals – it opens with Duke Ellington’s ‘In a Sentimental Mood’, then continues with a Mehler improvisation, ‘Esplanade Blues’, presumably named for the New Orleans studio (a repurposed church) in which he found himself playing. Mingus’ ‘Alice’s Wonderland’, Bill Frisell’s ‘Justice and Honor’, Rodgers and Hart’s ‘My Funny Valentine’ and more Ellington – ‘In my Solitude’, ‘Come Sunday’ – as well as Richard M. Jones’s title cut follow, interspersed with further Mehler self-penned numbers including the delightful ‘There at the Heart’. It’s a subtly creative, ruminative performance, gentle in pacing and execution and deep in reflection.