Brad Mehldau's new album, After Bach is out now on Nonesuch Records. The album comprises the pianist/composer's recordings of four preludes and one fugue from J.S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, each followed by an After Bach piece written by Mehldau and inspired by its WTC mate. The album begins with Mehldau's own "Before Bach: Benediction" and ends with his "Prayer for Healing." After Bach is the Guardian's Contemporary Album of the Month.

To pick up a copy of After Bach, head to your local music store, iTunes, Amazon, and the Nonesuch Store, where CD orders include a download of the complete album at checkout. You can also listen to the album on Spotify and Apple Music.

Brad Mehldau will perform music from After Bach in four concerts in France starting later this month, in Bordeaux, Grenoble, Paris, and Alfortville. Details and tickets at nonesuch.com/on-tour.

As Mehldau's label mate Timo Andres says in his After Bach liner note, "As a professional organist, much of Bach's work took the form of improvisation, and during his lifetime it was the virtuosity and complexity of these improvisations for which he was most admired … Some three centuries after the fact, Brad Mehldau takes up this tradition and applies it to a frustratingly unknowable aspect of Bach's art."

Andres continues, "There have always been elements of Mehldau's style that recall Bach, especially his densely-woven voicing—but he's not striving to imitate or play dress-up. Rather, After Bach surveys their shared ground as keyboardists, improvisers, and composers, making implicit parallels explicit."

After Bach originated in a work Mehldau first performed in 2015—commissioned by Carnegie Hall, The Royal Conservatory of Music, The National Concert Hall, and Wigmore Hall—called Three Pieces After Bach.