Joshua Redman and Brad Mehldau were in Australia last week for a brief duo tour, including two concerts in Sydney for the 2012 Sydney Festival and one in Melbourne. Mehldau's "capacity for setting up a steady rhythm at fast pace was mesmerising, helping to drive Redman's playing on tenor and soprano to delirious heights," says The Australian of Friday's Sydney show. "It works at the highest level and is deeply human: full of delight, surprise, even ecstasy." The Brisbane Times gives Saturday's Melbourne show four stars: "It was playing of the highest order."
Joshua Redman and Brad Mehldau were in Australia last week for a brief duo tour, including two concerts in Sydney, at the Chatswood Concourse on Thursday and City Recital Hall Angel Place on Friday, as part of the 2012 Sydney Festival. They then headed south for a show at the Melbourne Recital Centre on Saturday.
"To listen to two of the leading US musicians of their generation communicating on stage so miraculously is to wonder why the attractive format of piano and saxophone hasn't been more commonplace in jazz," writes The Australian's Lynden Barber in a review of the duo's Friday night show.
The two instruments alone were more than sufficient in the hands of such musicians as Redman and Mehldau. The pianist's "capacity for setting up a steady rhythm at fast pace was mesmerising, helping to drive Redman's playing on tenor and soprano to delirious heights," reports Barber, who quips that he "looked in vain for the umbilical cord linking their brains."
This duo combination "works at the highest level and is deeply human," Barber concludes: "full of delight, surprise, even ecstasy."
Read the complete concert review at theaustralian.com.au.
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The Brisbane Times gives four stars to Saturday's final show at the Melbourne Recital Centre.
"Redman and Mehldau have a deep rhythmic sympathy, but they are also adept at standing aside and letting the non-existent rhythm section have its say," notes Times reviewer David James of the duo's ability to harness the power of silence and the unspoken bond between them. "The result with both men resembles philosopher Leibniz's description of music as occult mathematics performed by a mind unconscious of the fact. It was playing of the highest order."
Read the four-star review at brisbanetimes.com.au.
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Mehldau next performs an intimate solo set at the Sixth & I Synagogue in Washington, DC, this Saturday. Redman reunites with his Trio, featuring Reuben Rogers and Gregory Hutchinson, for a tour of Europe starting in Munich on February 2. Redman and Mehldau resume their duo tour in the US this April. For details on both performers' schedules, go to nonesuch.com/on-tour.
To peruse Joshua Redman and Brad Mehldau's respective Nonesuch catalogs, head to the Nonesuch Store, where most CDs include high-quality, 320 kbps MP3s at checkout.
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