My seat mate at last night's concert by Brad Mehldau and Joshua Redman admitted that he wouldn't recognize it if Mehldau decided to rhapsodize on a Radiohead song, and that it really didn't matter. And that statement summarizes the way the pianist and saxophonist erase the boundaries between source material and art. In their hands, everything is beauty.
In fact, it was a Jeff Buckley composition that offered the most intense interaction between Mehldau and Redman, in a concert stuffed with high-level interaction.
Timeless and sublime, it was the kind of exchange of musical ideas that went well beyond the music being played. To mine the cliché about jazz duets, it was more of a conversation than a recital. And we were privileged to have overheard.
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