Brad Mehldau’s seven-disc box set The Art of the Trio Recordings: 1996–2001 is now available on both sides of the Atlantic via Nonesuch Records, following last week's North American release and this week's European release. The set includes the five original Art of the Trio albums (the fifth volume includes two CDs), released over a prolific four year period from 1997 to 2001; a seventh disc of previously unreleased material from shows at the Village Vanguard completes the box. These recordings feature longtime Brad Mehldau Trio bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy.

"[F]or five years from 1996 the Brad Mehldau Trio were playing music together that few at the time could ignore and which with The Art Of The Trio Recordings: 1996–2001 still more will arrive at," predicts the UK's Jazzwise magazine. Here "we can get a glimpse for the first time in the greatest depth possible so far exactly what pianist Brad Mehldau, double bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy were laying down in the studio and playing live at New York jazz club The Village Vanguard," writes Jazzwise reviewer Stephen Graham. "It's all documented in one place in a carefully annotated box set with additional unreleased material."

Graham goes on to cite an earlier 2011 Nonesuch release from Mehldau, his two-CD-plus-DVD solo album Live in Marciac, to comment on the live recordings in the trio box set. "If you’ve heard Mehldau’s most recent album Live in Marciac released this year," writes Graham, "you’ll know without even hearing a note here that he plays live as if he were in a studio and sometimes in the studio as if it were a live show but manages in both contexts to channel the adrenalin and naturalness needed whether by a process of zen, or supreme concentration, which keeps him free to experiment within his carefully constructed idioms."

Returning to his opening prediction that this new collection will bring new fans to Brad Mehldau's music, Graham concludes: "You don’t have to be a Brad fan or were a baby in the 1990s to buy this box. It probably helps though if you’re still a Brad doubter. If you are, draw the curtains, listen to this remarkable trio. You might even think about jazz anew."

Read the complete review at jazzwise.com.

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The Columbia Daily Tribune, out of Columbia, Missouri, includes The Art of the Trio Recordings: 1996–2001 on its annual holiday gift guide, calling it an "exploration of the radiant and adventurous jazz created when pianist and leader Brad Mehldau, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy sat in the same room. Mehldau is one of this generation’s true innovators, and this collection showcases the way his musical personality has been amplified and accented through the art of collaborative creation."

To pick up a copy of The Art of the Trio Recordings box set in the Nonesuch Store, where all CDs are now 34% off standard retail price—bringing the seven-CD box set to just $29.69 for the holidays—as part of the Nonesuch Store's fourth anniversary sale.