Mehldau’s Not a Pianist --He’s Two

Brad Mehldau is a fiercely original pianist who doesn’t take kindly to comparisons with other pianists. Saturday at Founders Hall in the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Mehldau’s pair of performances offered ample opportunity for comparisons with probably the most expressive pianist of the current generation: himself.

That’s because Mehldau played two sets: one with his trio and the other solo.

With in-demand bassist Larry Grenadier off to catch a late plane to Tokyo, Mehldau scheduled the second set without drummer Jorge Rossy. The two performances meshed nicely with Mehldau’s last two CDs, both released this year; one is a trio appearance with Grenadier and Rossy recorded live at New York’s Village Vanguard (the fourth in his “Art of the Trio” series), and the other is a collection of solo piano pieces titled “Elegiac Cycle.”

While Mehldau’s solo performance here was less solemn and weighty than the original music on “Elegiac Cycle,” it was nonetheless impressive. Set against the earlier trio set, the pianist’s work was more dense and insistent, more likely to spin off into uncharted territory, such as tunes from Brian Wilson, the Beatles and James Taylor.

Even Taylor’s familiar “Fire and Rain,” a song reputedly about beating drug addiction (something Mehldau has acknowledged facing) became serious, unsettling and quite different from itself.

By contrast, with Rossy and Grenadier there to fill the nooks and crannies of the music, Mehldau was more patient and spare. But that doesn’t mean he was more conservative.

The opening number of the trio set, “The More I See You,” was given straight treatment through the initial theme before Mehldau begin expanding the harmonies, spurring intricate right-hand lines with unexpected chords and dissonance from his left. Then the tune spiraled into something else again, with only a brief quote of the original melody near its close to remind us where he had started.

Grenadier and Rossy, rather than functioning as accompanists, performed as equals with the piano, plotting separate courses but carried by the same breeze.

Bassist Grenadier pushed and pulled the music with offbeat accents, quickly plucked echoes or long, meandering lines. His unanticipated turns gave even the lightest tune an air of uncertainty. You never knew which way he would go next.

Rossy drummed up color with brushes on cymbals or, to darken the mood, with rumbling tom-toms. As many times as Mehldau modulated his play or shifted emotions, the drummer was there in double-time.

Mehldau frequently paused in his improvisations to let a bass line or a percussion figure rise to the top, then added response. When the pianist pushed the edge of sense and sound, drums and bass were there pushing with him.

Comparisons with other pianists surfaced during the solo set, but they had more to do with Beethoven and Cesar Franck than jazzmen such as Bill Evans or Paul Bley. Even as he played Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” or Nick Drake’s “Things Behind the Sun,” Mehldau’s classical background was mirrored in the romantic figures and complicated voicings that poured from his hands.

The Beatles’ “Dear Prudence” transformed itself into Henry Mancini’s “Moon River.” “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” took on an intellectual poignancy that Sinatra could never have imagined.

Mehldau may front one of the leading piano trios of our time, but his solo work, as aired here, may be even more important to the future of improvisational music. Between the two, there’s no comparison.