Joshua Redman And Brad Mehldau, Nearness (Nonesuch)
They forged their empathy when Mehldau was the pianist in saxophonist Redman’s quartet in the mid-1990s. In encounters over the years since, they have honed their rapport to a remarkable degree. These duo recordings from six cities on their 2011 European tour find them knitting together improvisational lines in Redman’s “Melsancholy Mood,†sparring with vigor in exchanges of 2-bar phrases during Thelonious Monk’s “In Walked Bud†and issuing blazing bebop pronouncements in Charlie Parker’s “Ornithology.†They rhapsodize through the Mehldau originals “Always August†and “Old West.†The height of their inventiveness comes despite—or perhaps because of—the extremely slow tempo of Hoagy Carmichael’s “The Nearness of You.†Reflecting on that incomparable melody, they create a mood deepened further by Redman’s unaccompanied tenor saxophone musings, which at the end prompt the audience to emerge from the reverie and deliver an ovation.