Formation: Building a Personal Canon, Part I

Brad Mehldau

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Honorable Mention in the 2024 Jazz Journalists Association Book Awards: "A penetrating memoir" BEST HISTORICAL RESEARCH IN RECORDED JAZZ, 2024 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards As an innovative and constantly inventive jazz pianist, Brad Mehldau has attracted a sizable following that has grown to expect a singular, intense experience from his performances. With Formation, Brad seeks to extend that experience to the page, by sharing some of the deeply personal elements of his life, and how these came together for him to become the musician and person that he is today. He offers an in-depth look at how he came to understand his adoption, being sexually groomed in high school, and overcoming heroin addiction in his twenties. The book creates a vibrantly written portrait of the jazz world in New York in the late 1980s and early 1990s.The atmosphere of the clubs, the creative scene in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and Brad's early experiences of touring are brilliantly brought to life. The formation of the MoodSwing quartet with Joshua Redman is described, as is the growth of Brad's own groups, leading to his acclaimed Art of the Trio series of recordings with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy. Also covered is the trio's later life with Jeff Ballard joining in place of Rossy, along with Brad's solo ventures and his explorations of other areas of music. Brad's period of addiction - both his painful decline and ultimate redemption - makes for compelling and often distressing reading. Yet, throughout the book, his own reading and listening are a constant frame of reference and often inspiration, from the works of James Joyce and Thomas Mann to the sounds of prog rock and Bob Dylan, not to mention critics such as Harold Bloom and Terry Eagleton. Intimate, vulnerable, and profound, Formation is a rare look inside the mind of an artist at the top of his field, in his own words.

Book Details

Publisher: Equinox Publishing
Publish Date: Mar 1st, 2025
Pages: 311
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 9.21in - 6.30in - 0.94in - 1.20lb
EAN: 9781800503137
Categories: • History & Criticism - General• Genres & Styles - Jazz• Music

About the Author

Mehldau, Brad: - Brad Mehldau is an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger.

Praise for this book

Reviews

This is incredible writing. It's loose, specific and sharp as a knife. Brad writes words like he plays piano - with delicate strength and a gift for accessing memories and turning them into thick emotions.

I feel lucky to be around while Brad is here with us. He seems to have access to wells of memories and emotions that few people do. I love his writing as much as I love his music.

It's hard to go backwards and access memories like Brad does here. They are dark, funny, inspiring and moving. It's details are what makes it special - the kind of things that only happen when you open yourself.

Paul Thomas Anderson

Brad Mehldau's elegant clarity and lyrical interiority, hallmarks of his artistry as a jazz pianist, also stamp every page of this brilliant and affecting memoir - rooted in a fearless, radical candor. Rarely has an artist revealed themselves so fully as a prism onto the meaning of their art, and a chronicle of a dynamic moment in time.

Nate Chinen, author of Playing Changes: Jazz For the New Century

Brad Mehldau is our jazz generation's Conjurer-In-Chief. His music is nothing short of magic - an impossible wonder of ecstatic and empathic creative communion, to which I myself have borne witness, time and time again. Now, in this probing and provocative memoir, Brad finally shares with us some of the secrets (or at least the stories) behind the casting of his innumerable spells. A worthy read for anyone intrigued by the genesis of genius.

Joshua Redman

Few jazz biographies are this personal, and this raw, but then few are so good.

Jazz Journal

Mehldau's writing style reflects both his musical character and his persona; juxtaposing deep philosophical insight with intensely personal experiences described in straight-talking, graphic detail. He is equally eloquent writing about Harold Bloom's and Terry Eagleton's views on ideology in art as he is writing about shooting up heroin in a run-down building, needing to call an ambulance, and getting arrested.

Throughout the book, Mehldau keeps the reader engaged in a compelling account of a twisted life which threatened to derail the music and the musician but in which, thankfully, the music prevailed.