Two astounding minds have set a date in 2006 on the backgound of a material compiled under the emblem of Nonesuch. They have known each other for quite a while, they had admired one another long before they met, because they are among the best - the guitarist Pat Metheny and the pianist Brad Mehldau - 'a dream pair' in everyone's opinion, both the critics and the public, who are fascinated by the magnitude of a discourse in which the ideas intertwine naturally, in which jazz shows one if its most fasinating 'faces', a form gushing with modernity, intelligence and sensibility. 'Metheny-Mehldau' is the name of the album for which we are launching you the invitation to remain, on 11^th January, bonded to the frequencies of Romania Music; it is not a very new one, but it offers so many opportunities to those who up to the present moment have not yet been subdued to open to this art of improvising, or, if you are connoisseurs, to once more feel the confirmation of why you love jazz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sesFa0nodms

For Pat Metheny, the one who won twenty Grammy awards in thirty years, one of the beauties of jazz is related to the fact that it allows those who play to uncover their individuality and who they truly are as musicians, in a manner that is not possible in other forms. In another train of ideas, he believes that a musician has the duty to 'document' the time he is living in through the way in which he manifests himself sonorously in the improvising plan, always with his ears wide open, with honesty and rooted in contemporaneity. For that matter, his jazz has a rock 'sensibility'. But the artist is speaking both about the unifying principle that pervades music, regardless of the era or of the style. He doesn't point out any differences between Bach, Herbie Hancock, John Coltrane or Igor Stravinski. 'The aspects which bind them are many more than those which separate them'

Similar ideas can be found even with respect to Brad Mehldau, sixteen years younger than his colleague, structurally very close, the pianist who has been dominating the stages of the world for the last twenty years and who looks to classical music with earnestness. He declares that he is fascinated by harmony (the science of combining hamonies) and by what is happening underneath the melody. 'In general, the stress is put on the melody, and you can lose your interlocutors if you want to talk to them about harmony. But Schubert, Brahms, Beatles, John Coltrane or Duke Ellington were all great harmonists. They have written astounding melodies, which wouldn't have meant a great deal if it wasn't for the hamony.'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPedkBYlsYw

Another form of harmony is the way in which Pat Metheny and Brad Mehldau are playing together, in a two-formula in eight of the songs from the album and in a quartet in the other two, together with the bass player Larry Grenadier and Jeff Ballard at the battery, who are both members of the Brad Mehldau Trio.

We should also add the fact that the plays signed by Pat Metheny predominate and only three of them are composed by the pianist Brad Mehldau, thus each musician is keeping his individuality, which is aways enriched by the inspired interventions of the team-mate.

(Sunday, 11^th January, on Jazz à la carte, at 12:30)