AMG Review of Live in Tokyo

Matt Collar
All Music Guide

Moving ever closer to becoming his generation's Keith Jarrett, Live in Tokyo finds pianist Brad Mehldau delving into a solo piano performance in February of 2003 with a quiet intensity, mixing a kind of studied jazz formalism with a lyrical "train-of-thought" avant-gardism. Ever the iconoclast, Mehldau tackles such varied compositions as Nick Drake's "Things Behind the Sun," Thelonious Monk's "Monk's Dream," a couple Gershwin standards, and Radiohead's "Paranoid Android." Clocking in at almost 20 minutes, "Android" stands as the epic and expansive centerpiece of this intense, cerebral, and beautiful album.