Brad Mehldau & Kevin Hays
Modern Music
Nonesuch Records
www.nonesuch.com
By George W. Harris

What worlds has pianist Brad Mehldau not conquered? Sort of like Alexander the Great, he seems to always search for new lands to explore. Here, he’s joined at the keyboards with Kevin Hays, and overseen by composer/arranger Patrick Zimmerli. The material is supplied by all three, as well as by Ornette Coleman, Phillip Glass and Steve Reich. If it sounds stuffy and staid, don’t worry. The sophisticated and complex pieces are artful works that mix suspense, celebration and mystic.

Glass’ “Excerpt” has sublime drama, while Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman” has the 20 fingers separating and coalescing together like a series of train tracks at Rome’s Stazione Termini. Zimmerli’s own “Crazy Quilt” has rich layers that are reminiscent of Poulenc, with Mehldau and Hays. Unlike other piano duets like Strayhorn/Ellington or Ammons/Lewis, this is not a simple theme-solo-theme summit, rather Zimmerli takes the music into intriguing corridors and hall ways, making each variation a pathway into something more complex and foreboding. I listened to this while taking a walk in the hills on a moonless night. Couldn’t have picked a better soundtrack.