Brad Mehldau Trio, St George's Bristol review - exquisite intelligence

There's something luminous about the Brad Mehldau Trio. The music they create with such joy shines with a special clarity, in which ever-changing forms constantly reveal lines of shared thought, explicitly, yet purveying an abiding sense of wonder. Intellect – and there is plenty of that – is matched here with the fire of inspiration and the thrill of constant surprise.

There are so many facets to the lucid dreaming that’s played out by these three exceptional musicians – Felix Moseholm on bass and Jorge Rossy on drums, and the maestro himself. There’s no end to the thrill of intimate communication between them: a kind of subtle call-and-response, a conversation in which listening and silence plays as much part as the articulate enunciation of sounds. Mehldau is renowned for the way in which he has advanced the range of jazz piano by giving as much melodic presence to his left hand as to the right. That delightful interplay, interspersed with more predictable interventions that keep the thread of chord changes in mind, creates a kind of inner dialogue, as if the pianist were talking to himself, taking pleasure in a diversity of voices that constantly surprises.

Mehldau is a virtuoso, but he wears his technical prowess lightly, never showing off. He is also, in a trio context, an equal, rather than the figurehead that bass and drums merely accompany. There is much listening in the way they combine, and he listens as much as they do, responding to them not just using them as a springboard from which to flourish. Feliz Moseholm delights in a kind of minimalism, each note an essential part of delicate discourse, providing rhythmic structure one moment and undermining the pulse creatively at another. The way he manages suspense while supporting Mehldau is so well-crafted and seemingly easy-going that it would be easy to miss. He has plenty of space for solos, and his moments are wonderfully wrought, delicate and graceful and yet never less than powerful and confident. On “Felix’s Tune”, an original Mehldau composition inspired by one of the pianist’s dreams, the bass solo is made all the more engaging by a series of light drumstick touches on the edge and centre of a cymbal, glittering contrasts with the rounded tone of the double bass.

Jorge Rossy – who has worked on and off with Mehldau for over 30 years – is the perfect partner. Capable of gentle explosions when needed, he is a master of the brushes, eliciting a range of timbres whose colour matches the subtle explorations of the piano and bass most exquisitely. As his fellow musicians, he is a master of understatement, a virtuoso, as they all are, putting his technical skill and musician’s feeling at the service of an endlessly mutating whole.

From the first two pieces, "Quit" and "Unrequited", both Mehldau compositions, the sparkling modesty of the trio is in evidence. They establish very quickly a modus operandi – a way of working that shines through its seeming effortlessness, and yet sense of ceaseless adventure and surprise. Here is a piano trio – one of the mainstays of jazz, after all – which breaks the rules without needing to make the freedom with which they play seem in any way less than obvious, as if the unexpected were a natural form of expression. This is, no doubt, why Brad Mehldau is seen as a thinking person’s jazz musician. And yet a fabulous entertainer as well.

Many touring musicians fall back on a set that remains the same from venue to venue, or changes little. The Brad Mehldau Trio is different, and the Bristol set, given a particular resonance by the wonderful and renowned acoustic of St George’s repeated none of the pieces they had played the previous evening at Saffron Hall. They clearly go for freshness – reflecting the sense of the unexpected that characterises the narrative of each individual piece. That welcome presence of moments when the players follow the path least predictable inhabits the pieces themselves, giving the whole an underlying but never intrusive coherence. This perhaps most noticeable when they launch into standards – not so may in Bristol as on other occasions – such as the Jerome Kern – Ira Gershwin classic “Long Ago and Far Away”, made famous by Frank Sinatra. The melodic reference points are there, but the theme is toyed with, teased, with affection for the original but a joyful desire for ways in which it can be made new, which each phrase offering new vistas. Serious fun, which was visibly enjoyed by all.

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