Mehldau Trio Goes Far Beyond ‘Gershwin’

The Skirball Cultural Center’s “Gershwin and Beyond” series kicked off Thursday night with a performance by the Brad Mehldau Trio. As it turned out, however, it was “Beyond” rather than “Gershwin” that occupied most of the spotlight.

Mehldau clearly seemed primarily interested in displaying material from his new album, “Places.” But even when he departed from his own material, he frequently chose composers other than Gershwin--Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz’s “Alone Together,” Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “It Might As Well Be Spring,” Jerome Kern’s “The Folks Who Live on the Hill” and, curiously, “Long Ago and Far Away,” with lyrics by Ira Gershwin and music by Jerome Kern. The latter has been a staple of the Mehldau Trio’s performance repertoire, but it seemed an odd choice--as did the other standards--for a series so specifically oriented toward the music of George Gershwin.

When Mehldau did get around to the evening’s anticipated primary topic, the results were impressive. In action, especially when he becomes deeply involved with the unfolding music, he is an extremely physical player, his body movements richly involved in the process of building a charge to energize his creative process. And with “Our Love Is Here to Stay” and “How Long Has This Been Going On?” the process was in full flower.

Sometimes arching back from the keyboard to extend his arms full-length, occasionally compressing inward, bringing his face down close to the keyboard, at other times suspending his left arm in midair as he articulated brisk, right-hand passages, Mehldau brought his entire persona in touch with the music. Although he repeated a tendency to frame his improvisations within a narrow, pitch-limited, two-octave right-hand range, his ideas were imaginative, his phrasing tinged with swing. And on the Gershwin numbers, as elsewhere, his growing skills as a composer tended to invest his improvisations with spontaneous structures, pulling in bits and pieces of the original melody as connective links.

Given his abilities, and the strong support from bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy, it would have been nice to have heard more Gershwin. But Mehldau is rapidly becoming the sort of jazz artist who provides a compelling musical experience, regardless of the programmatic circumstances.