Absolute Freedom

He is one of the most exciting jazz pianists of our times, an artist who refuses to acknowledge genre boundaries. As far as he is concerned, every audible phenomenon, from pop hits to the classics, is the perfect raw ingredient from which to create music, and what's more, both viscerally fascinating and intellectually complex music. In advance of his first solo recital in Budapest on 5 November, the American Brad Mehldau spoke to the Liszt Academy's Concert Magazine about the hazards of playing solo, how improvisation works and the angelic nature of Beethoven, Bach, Coltrane and Hendrix.

How important is classical music for you as a jazz musician?

I employ very many classical elements, but the same goes for pop and rock, or I could say even Brazilian dance music and many, many other motifs. On the one hand, the several hundred years of the classical canon can hardly be ignored, and on the other hand it represents an inexhaustible store of possibilities. However, I consider myself first and foremost an improvisational jazz musician who tries to draw creatively on music literature and to use everything possible. Thus my choices of music are not coincidental, but in my case this is not what you might call classical piano playing.

What is the difference between solo playing and improvising together with others?

One thing's for sure and that is that playing solo represents the greatest challenge because I am playing without a safety net. I don't have anyone else to grab me if I slip. Solo is absolute freedom. Whether acknowledged or not, it is a fact that when improvising together jazz musicians vary the themes along the lines of patterns that form part of the collective store of knowledge, even when they are throwing musical refrains back and forth, or when they duel. If I play by myself, then there is no such dramaturgical guidance: I can only count on myself. Of course, it is also true that I don't have to pay attention to anyone else's playing. But then again, when I do this it is essential that I arrange the composition around some sort of story. Things become really exciting when the audience also gets this story.

So, how do you go about preparing for your solo recitals?

Like any true jazz musician, I plan out and invent the foundations of my improvisation. I bring several ideas and stories to the stage. In practice, this means specific musical themes that can be enhanced by phrases. Then it frequently happens that I pick out only a single stem from this carefully composed bouquet, and this is what I hand to the audience, especially if the performance comes together. I decide in advance roughly the length of each theme, but if I'm in the swing of it and I linger a bit on a particular motif, if I let the music influence and carry me, then there is often no time for the other themes. During the preparatory stage I also try to decide on the form beforehand. For instance, whether to stay within the framework of a sonata form retaining the classical exposition-development-reprise trinity or to play more freely.

The broader public took notice of your art from your pop and rock arrangements. On what basis do you choose to arrange a Beatles, Radiohead or Nirvana number?

Good, strong songs – these are the ones I like to play. It is as simple as that.

By your own admission John Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix diverted you from classical music. How did this happen?

In the early 1980s my parents sent me to a music camp for three summers in a row. It was located less than a mile away from Tanglewood, the famous outdoor venue where the Boston Symphony Orchestra resides every summer. We regularly went on trips to Tanglewood. I was so lucky. I saw people like Leonard Bernstein and Georg Solti, and heard pianists like Rudolf Serkin. Our camp was for playing chamber music; everyone went to classical music school, as I did. During my third summer, one of my roommates, a guy named Louis from New York, pulled out a cassette featuring The John Coltrane Quartet. Despite the heatwave we locked ourselves in the room, which was like a sauna, and listened to the 20-minute recording for hours. The music of Coltrane really freaked me out. Back home in suburbia my friends were listening to The Police and Van Halen; these New York City kids were listening to Coltrane. In the same summer, my other roommate, who was a piano player like me, was listening non-stop to Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsies recording from the Filmore East album. Machine Gun took me somewhere else and just dumped me there. The music of Coltrane and Hendrix registered as pleasure for me, of course, but they were a new kind of pleasure. It was destabilizing but filled me with an unknown joy; I felt that they held a power that was beyond my comprehension. They represented such greatness that my first reaction was of fear. Only later did I come to realise that this experience is what the writers of the Bible meant when they wrote about the "fear" of God.

Reading your interviews it is noticeable that you make frequent reference to the spiritual aspects of music. Can you explain what you are thinking of here?

Bach's Goldberg Variations, Coltrane's Love Supreme, Hendrix's Machine Gun are "spiritual" experiences, but not in the moralizing, strictly religious sense. Only the greatest were capable of reaching such heights. Beethoven – the first true rock star in music, who showed the way for Liszt and Keith Richards – came closest to his creator with the Missa Solemnis, written late in his life. It is a mass that retains the established forms in appearance only; in its content, however, it overwhelms all other masses before it. In the system of iconography of European Christian culture it falls to the angels to participate in the divine. In this sense Bach, Beethoven, Coltrane and Hendrix were all angels.