Brad Mehldau and Chris Thile team up for elegant, beautiful music

By Michael J. West, Published: April 13
Brad Mehldau and Chris Thile both play music in which technical virtuosity is front and center. The former is a jazz pianist, easily the most influential of his generation; the latter, an innovator of the bluegrass mandolin who won a MacArthur “genius” award last year. So their duo performance Friday night at the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center was an achievement in itself. Their complex work translated to plain-faced beauty: simple, direct and exquisite.

(Michael Wilson) - Brad Mehldau

That’s not to diminish either man’s abilities or expression thereof. Nothing could diminish the delicate grace of Thile’s mandolin solo on Joni Mitchell’s “Marcie” or the two-handed classically steeped chords with which Mehldau followed it. And what’s to undercut the glory of a bebop duet? Specifically, a duet on Charlie Parker’s “Dexterity,” whose name says it all; Mehldau gave it one of the most soulful readings he’s ever been known to play — everyone who’s accused him of lacking soul should hear this — and Thile threw every trick he had into his improvisation. And that’s without getting into the intricacies of the Celtic and Appalachian pastiches they worked through.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/brad-mehldau-and-chris-thile-team-up-for-elegant-beautiful-music/2013/04/13/4f2a5e76-a3e8-11e2-bd52-614156372695_story.html?wprss=rss_music