Conversations Between Two Languages
Mehldau finds something urgent in Bach's mathematics, something that breathes.
Brad Mehldau's approach to Bach isn't about reverence or scholarly recreation. He takes these pieces—preludes, fugues, inventions—and treats them like conversation partners, finding the jazz language already embedded in their architecture. What emerges on After Bach is neither Bach played jazzily nor jazz hiding behind baroque counterpoint, but something stranger: a pianist thinking out loud about how both traditions solve similar problems. The keyboard work here is dexterous without showing off. Mehldau's touch stays clean even when he's improvising around the harmonic structures, and he seems genuinely interested in letting the original lines breathe rather than obscuring them under virtuosity.
The record works best when you forget about the "after" part and just listen to how these pieces move. Some selections feel like natural extensions of what Bach was already doing—the harmonic sophistication, the ability to make multiple voices matter simultaneously. Other moments reveal something almost goofy: underneath all that mathematical precision, there's swing. Not forced swing, but the genuine rhythmic flexibility that happens when a musician stops thinking about time as a grid. Mehldau's interpretations here don't need to defend themselves against the originals. They're simply asking different questions.
This is very much a late-period Mehldau record, the work of someone secure enough not to prove anything. It's not the place to start with him—Introducing Brad Mehldau (1995) or Art of the Trio (1996) give you a clearer picture of his voice in straightforward jazz settings. But if you've spent time with his other work and want to understand how deeply he thinks about the instrument and about melody, this one rewards attention. It's ambitious without being pretentious, which is harder than it sounds.
Who's playing
Brad Mehldaupiano
