Moving ever closer to becoming his generation's
Keith Jarrett,
Live in Tokyo finds pianist
Brad Mehldau delving into a solo piano performance in February of 2003 with a quiet intensity, mixing a kind of studied jazz formalism with a lyrical "train-of-thought" avant-gardism. Ever the iconoclast,
Mehldau tackles such varied compositions as
Nick Drake's "Things Behind the Sun,"
Thelonious Monk's "Monk's Dream," a couple
Gershwin standards, and
Radiohead's "Paranoid Android." Clocking in at almost 20 minutes, "Android" stands as the epic and expansive centerpiece of this intense, cerebral, and beautiful album. ~ Matt Collar