Brad Mehldau salutes songwriter Elliott Smith on ‘Ride Into the Sun’

Pianist-composer Brad Mehldau has always cast a wide net in terms of his repertoire. That’s true of his new album “Ride Into the Sun,” featuring music by the late singer, songwriter and guitarist Elliott Smith, released Aug. 29 on Nonesuch. 

For “Ride Into the Sun’,” Mehldau interprets 10 Elliott Smith songs, complemented by four Mehldau compositions that he says are “inspired by and reflect Smith’s oeuvre.” Also included are interpretations of Big Star’s “Thirteen,” which Smith also covered, and “Sunday” by Nick Drake, who Mehldau says, “I look at in some ways as sort of Smith’s visionary grandfather.” (Mehldau joins bassist Christian McBride for an SCP Jazz double bill Oct. 10.)

“Widely considered one of the greatest living jazz pianists," says the site Uncut of Mehldau in its four-star review of “Ride Into the Sun,” "a stunning collection of songs written or inspired by Elliott Smith. Much of the album feels like it’s throwing open the windows on his music, bringing fresh light to a songwriter too often painted as a tragic figure.” (Smith died by suicide at age 34 in 2003.)

Recalling how he first got to know Smith and his music, which has been a regular part of his repertoire for years, Mehldau said in the disc’s liner notes that after years living in New York, he moved to Los Angeles “and there was this wonderful scene of singer-songwriters that was congregating at a club called Largo. That included Elliott, but it also included artists like Rufus Wainwright, Fiona Apple. And then other musicians who had been around for a while would come down every Friday night to sit in on a gig that was led by Jon Brion. I played behind Elliott on his own tunes with Jon. It felt to me like a kind of renaissance in songwriting that flourished for a number of years.

“Elliott Smith masterfully rendered the dark/light admix not in the least through his distinct harmony,” Mehldau said. “Specifically, he had a way of combining major and minor modes that was all his own. You hear that on the unique, captivating chord progression that he introduced on ‘Tomorrow Tomorrow’ for just a moment before the last verse of the song. I use it, extending it for my piano solo here. This kind of minor-major gambit has a long pedigree, and my own associations as a listener include the music of Schubert and Brahms, among others."

As for Brahms, Mehldau added, “One of Brahms’ biographers described the feeling of one of his pieces as ‘smiling through tears,’ and it would be a good description for the opening tune of Elliott’s on this set, ‘Better Be Quiet Now.’ Here is a break-up song as tender as it is rueful; the protagonist is smiling sadly as he says goodbye.”

“ ‘Ride into the sun’ is a beautiful point in the lyric of one of the songs that we play, ‘Colorbars,’ ” Mehldau said. “Elliott Smith says in the original song, ‘Everyone wants me to ride into the sun.’ When I listen to music, I have a feeling that I can be in communion with somebody who is no longer in this earthly realm, like he is here. As far as ‘riding into the sun,’ it’s maybe more of a perpetual riding into the sun with him. I don’t know. There’s something mystical there.”

Featured musicians include singer-guitarist Daniel Rossen (Grizzly Bear); singer-mandolinist Chris Thile (Punch Brothers, Nickel Creek); bassists Felix Moseholm (Brad Mehldau Trio, Samara Joy) and John Davis (who also engineered and mixed the album); drummer Matt Chamberlain (Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Randy Newman), and a chamber orchestra led by Dan Coleman, who also conducted on Mehldau’s 2010 album “Highway Rider.”