From the archives
Geoffrey Smith listens afresh to a stunning pairing of pianist Brad Mehldau and bassist Charlie Haden
Savouring the live recording by the elite duo of Charlie Haden and Brad Mehldau, Long Ago and Far Away (Impulse 678 9500), I was reminded of a Wynton Marsalis remark about the young Louis Armstrong. Wynton said, ‘Louis Armstrong didn’t want to play “jazz”; he wanted to play whatever it was King Oliver was playing’. That’s to say, what matters in music isn’t the label or category, but the quality and character of the experience itself. In the case of both Haden and Mehldau that experience couldn’t be more diverse: their backgrounds encompass country and western, pop, rock, classical and the avant-garde, all of it yielding a shared jazz language that’s rich, intuitive and free.
On the face of it, their programme on this newly-issued Impulse recording of a concert given at a German festival in 2007 couldn’t be more middle-of-the-road: six standards, comprising a Charlie Parker blues, two waltzes, two ballads, an up-tempo swinger. But from the first note, discovery is the name of the game. Parker’s ‘Au Privave’ becomes a tongue-in-cheek abstraction on the blues, refusing an easy groove for Mehldau’s teasing keyboard flights across the bar, in and out of tempo and tonality, underpinned by Charlie’s pithy bass.
All the same, the partners never abandon a sense of clarity and structure. They truly play together and their whole performance celebrates the classic jazz virtues of space, time and melody. Both virtuosos of their instruments, they delight in beauty as well as ingenuity and wit. The waltzes – Irving Berlin’s tender ‘What’ll I Do’ and a Haden favourite, ‘My Love and I’ – have a lyrical lilt and piquancy, while the ballads – ’My Old Flame’ and ‘Everything Happens To Me’– are gorgeous without being saccharine, with the nuance and shading of real conversation.
Haden and Mehldau clearly had plenty to say to each other, relishing their only shared duo recording. The high point may be the title track, ‘Long Ago and Far Away’: swinging, subtle, joyous, the epitome of two masters simply making music together.
The greatest jazz players and their music are explored in Geoffrey Smith’s Jazz, a weekly programme broadcast on Saturdays from 12am-1am