Brad Mehldau spoke with The Economist’s The Intelligence podcast about his new album, Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles, released last month on Nonesuch, and his book, Formation: Building a Personal Canon, Part I, out this week on Equinox Publishing. “Among the top [jazz] practitioners in the world, and certainly among one of the most thoughtful and inquisitive spirits in jazz, is pianist Brad Mehldau,” says The Economist’s Sebastian Scotney. “He probably has the mantle of the world’s preeminent jazz pianist.” You can hear their conversation at eighteen minutes into the episode here via Spotify and Apple Podcasts:

Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles features the pianist and composer’s interpretations of nine songs by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and one by George Harrison. Although other Beatles songs have long been staples of Mehldau’s solo and trio shows, he had not previously recorded any of the tunes on Your Mother Should Know. The album, recorded in September 2020 at Philharmonie de Paris, ends with a David Bowie classic that draws a connection between The Beatles and pop songwriters who followed. You can get it and hear it here. Formation, which Mehldau calls “an autobiographical bildungsroman of sorts, tracing my musical and personal formation up until the age of twenty-six,” is available here.