ALREADY hailed as one of the finest of the current crop of brilliant young jazz pianists and as someone who may well shape the future one the instrument Brad Mehldau gave ample proof at his recent TCD Jazz Society Concert that, at barely 24, he is very much his own man. And, with superbly engaged musicians in Javier Collina (bass) and, especially, Stephen Keogh (drums), he has a working trio of a calibre seldom seen here.
They meshed impressively from the start, opening with neatly disguised excursions, firstly on the blues form in London Blues and then to these ears on I Got Rhythm changes in Nice Pass. Mehldau handled the material remarkably freely, particularly in his use of time, but not a nuance was missed by Keogh or Collina. At times the level of interplay, notably between Keogh and Mehldau, seemed astonishingly prescient, and it continued to be a feature of an outstanding concert.
Mehldau has as was evident in some of his brilliant, unaccompanied introductions an orchestral approach to the piano, with a dazzling technique that allows him to call into life, seemingly effortlessly, any idea that, occurs to him. The virtuoso intro to Just One Of Those Things was just one example out of several (and, after the trio theme statement, the piano break leading into the first improvised chorus was breath taking).
Consistently fine though the evening's music was, there was always the prospect of something truly exceptional from a trio this good. It came with a gorgeous When I Fall hi Love the imaginatively oblique unaccompanied piano intro, the theme treatment reminiscent in feel, if not in fact, of the great Bill Evans Trio, the sheer elasticity of Mehldau's solo, which was developed with inexorable logic and lyricism.
