Pianist Brad Mehldau marks a banner year with multiple music projects

The last year has been extremely productive for pianist Brad Mehldau. March brought the publication of his book Formation: Building a Personal Canon, Part 1. In February, Nonesuch released his live solo album “Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles.” In June, to mark its 20th anniversary, Mehldau’s acclaimed album “Largo” (Nonesuch) received its first-ever vinyl release. And his latest project is The Folly of Desire, a song cycle written for and featuring tenor Ian Bostridge.

This fall, he also is on the road with his longtime trio featuring bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard for a tour that stops here for a Symphony Center Presents Jazz concert Nov. 17.

“Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles” features his interpretations of nine songs by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and one by George Harrison. Although other Beatles songs have long been staples of Mehldau’s solo and trio shows, he had not previously recorded any of the tunes on “Your Mother Should Know.” The album ends with David Bowie’s “Life on Mars,” which draws “a connection between the Beatles and pop songwriters who followed.” “Your Mother Should Know” was recorded in September 2020 at Philharmonie de Paris.

“There is an undisputed universality to The Beatles,” Mehldau said in the liner notes. “Their music cuts across cultural and generational lines, as new listeners continue to discover it. There is an immediacy and integrity to their songs that draws everyone in.

“When I was getting started at the instrument, the Beatles were not on my radar yet, but a lot of the enduring piano-pop music I heard on the radio grew out of them. That music became part of my personality, and when I discovered the Beatles later, it all tied together. Their music, and its wide influence on other artists, continues to inform what I do.”

On “Largo,” produced by Jon Brion, Mehldau experiments with electronic instrumentation on originals and covers, including Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” and the Beatles’ “Dear Prudence.” 

The Folly of Desire (Pentatone) explores “the limits of sexual freedom in a post-#MeToo political age,” together with tenor Ian Bostridge, one of the greatest song interpreters of our times. Set to poetry by Blake, Yeats, Shakespeare, Brecht, Goethe, Auden and Cummings, Mehldau’s music shifts between jazz  and art song, and the work explores a theme as timeless as it is topical. To emphasize the cycle’s stylistic diversity, Mehldau and Bostridge also tackle jazz standards, along with a Schubert lied.

“It’s a dream come true for me to be able to share this project with the world,”  Mehldau said in the liner notes. “Ian and I have worked very hard over several years, fine-tuning our performances, and the recording reflects that. It’s an important project artistically as well as personally for me. I’m glad that an audience will have the opportunity to hear it.” 

His Formation: Building a Personal Canon creates a portrait of the New York jazz world in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as a new generation of musicians met and took music in new directions, including traditions rooted in the jazz and classical worlds. Mehldau recalls the formation of the Mood Swing quartet with Joshua Redman and his own groups, leading to his acclaimed “Art of the Trio” series of recordings with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy (and later, Jeff Ballard).