As I have mentioned a number of times, and as noted in a recent post about Marcus Roberts, I often listen to music when writing. I particularly enjoy a variety of pianists who blend jazz and classical influences. The recordings of Brad Mehldau have frequently been favorite choices for background sounds when composing poems. I appreciate very much the outstanding work he has done over the years with his trio, but I also turn to his more personal solo performances as well.
Mehldau’s Elegiac Cycle, recorded in early 1999, is one of his solo discs I repeatedly play while writing. Appropriately, in his liner notes Mehldau expresses a debt to literary works as inspiration, and he quotes a few of the authors whose writings have moved him to compose his music. Indeed, one of the nine tracks on this album is “Elegy for William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg,” inspired by the lives and literature of the two authors, both of whom died in 1997.
In his comments about the music in Elegiac Cycle, Mehldau remarks upon being attracted to the elegiac strains of art “that mourn so many kinds of loss, from the most profound to the most prosaic of them all—what the French aptly call ‘la petite mort.’” Mehldau especially points toward the works of “writers like Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs” as representative of authors who “mourned—at times, ecstatically—America’s loss of naiveté.”
Brad Mehldau was born on this date (August 23) in 1970. Therefore, I thought today would be a fitting time to present the video above, which offers a good example of Mehldau’s talent as a soloist and as the member of an outstanding trio.
Mehldau’s Elegiac Cycle, recorded in early 1999, is one of his solo discs I repeatedly play while writing. Appropriately, in his liner notes Mehldau expresses a debt to literary works as inspiration, and he quotes a few of the authors whose writings have moved him to compose his music. Indeed, one of the nine tracks on this album is “Elegy for William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg,” inspired by the lives and literature of the two authors, both of whom died in 1997.
In his comments about the music in Elegiac Cycle, Mehldau remarks upon being attracted to the elegiac strains of art “that mourn so many kinds of loss, from the most profound to the most prosaic of them all—what the French aptly call ‘la petite mort.’” Mehldau especially points toward the works of “writers like Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs” as representative of authors who “mourned—at times, ecstatically—America’s loss of naiveté.”
Brad Mehldau was born on this date (August 23) in 1970. Therefore, I thought today would be a fitting time to present the video above, which offers a good example of Mehldau’s talent as a soloist and as the member of an outstanding trio.
2 comments:
He's really wonderful! Thank you.
Nice piece by Brad Mehldau. What always fascinates me is that some people can write or read while listening to music. I've tried many times. To me it's like listening to two songs at once. Writing while listening to music just doesn't work for me. Same with reading and listening to music. Interesting how our brains are often so different.
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