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all words are trains for moving past what really has no name -
I really like Rick Beato's podcasts. The ones on pop music are really interesting for me as be pulls the music apart . Although he comes from a rock background, he is a jazz fan at heart.
I started to listen to Mehldau and find it interesting. Beato is really switched on to what is happening. Mehldau's touch and sense of harmony is incredible. In my opinion, he is one of the most recognisable jazz pianists around today. He comes across as pretty humourless as a person. I cannot recall just how many times I have heard him play live but I think he is a real marmite player. In the old days of "Impressions", I heard him for the first time with Konitz and Haden and was blown away. The same happened when I first heard him with his trio, There are other times when I have been bored to tears with him such as when I saw hm in a quartet with Pat Metheny. That should have been brilliant but seemed to sum up for me how bland a lot of jazz was starting to become.
When he is good, Melhdau is brilliant. . His moves towards more rock-orientated material with Mark Guilliana on drums is pretty dreadful, I did listen to the "Jacob's ladder" record and had nothing good to say about it. The Bach solo disc, by contrast, was exceptional. I am not too fussed by him recording modern pop music although , listening to the interview, he approaches this with genuine affection and musical logic. Everytime i hear musicians doing this. I keep thinking about Steve Lacy's hostility towards using pop songs as material after he remarked that there is sufficent jazz material to use without resorting to pop music. I suppose it is a snobby attitude and the antithesis of what Mehldau is about . Mehldau makes a good argument for exploting this material and it makes hom different. He has effectively taken over from Jarrett as the defining jazz pianist of his generation since he is effectively a more "Romantic" player but the piano trio is an increasingly less rewarding format to my ears. The best piano trio I have heard recently was Tyshawm SOrey's which took it's cues from Jarrett whilst flirting with more of an outfit field and a tendancy to tackle the works of jazz composers like Muhal Richard Abrams that, ahum. "Radiohead."
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