Brad Mehldau
The Dakota, Minneapolis, MN
October 7, 2025
Casual observers of my music taste will wonder, why Brad Mehldau? More careful readers might ask, why Minneapolis?
The short answer is that I was in Minneapolis for a work conference, and was able to meet with one of my organization’s donors, a trustee on a foundation that prefers to remain below the radar screen. She was the general counsel of a family that had a sprawling business empire before divesting and putting money into philanthropy and various passion projects. Among their various passion projects, they took over management of the Dakota jazz club, which was originally in a different location, but moved to the Nicollet Mall almost 30 years ago. (Lowell Picket,
the original founder of the Dakota in 1985, is very much involved and we had a lengthy conversation about music.)
The Dakota is a beautiful venue: handsome brickwork, fine wood tables, very good sound and sightlines for almost all the seats. And the dinner was excellent; I had the cod and my host a roasted half-chicken.
I didn’t know Mehldau’s work well, but I knew he was known as an interpreter and had released an album of Elliott Smith compositions, so I figured it would be accessible even for someone who doesn’t listen to jazz much. It was much better than I had anticipated. (
Setlist here: fellow rock listeners you will see a lot of familiar content and in particular, a lot of Trouser Press artists.)
Starting with three Billy Joel songs (not a Trouser Press artist), and the well-hashed Sondheim workhorse “Send in the Clowns,” his work got a lot more interesting with a lovely Jon Brion waltz (ex-Jellyfish, producer of Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, Elliott Smith, etc.). He has done whole records with Brion, but I don’t know Brion’s solo work except as a film composer and producer and impresario of the Largo scene in Los Angeles.
But that immediately raised the bar for the remainder of the show, even though I felt he got lost in the thicket of the dense Stone Temple Pilots “Interstate Love Song” (“for you grunge kids”). The solitary Elliott Smith composition he chose was a bit of a surprise to me; I have heard jazz or jazz-adjacent renditions of “Waltz #2” and “Between the Bars;” he chose “Satellite” from the self-titled
Elliott Smith record. It’s honestly not one I know very well, and it’s less immediately tuneful than Smith compositions from the
X/O or
Figure 8 eras, so it wouldn’t strike me as an obvious pick, but he took it as a launch point for extended improvisational runs.
Following that was perhaps one of my two or three favorite moments, an extended lyrical piano version of Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home,” relatively faithful to the original but with extended flourishes and soulful sideways adventures. I’m not a big classic rock fan but this was tremendous.
Among all the covers, and there were many, Mehldau did two of his own compositions from the record
Highway Rider, one of those produced by Jon Brion back in 2010. “John Boy” and “The Falcon Will Fly Again.” Both compositions were searching and elegant and ruminative, from a theme album of road music and searching for meaning in the American west. I would describe neither as completely jazz or completely pop in their structure, but reminded me to a certain extent of the loose, yearning, anxious soundtracks of Wim Wenders.
One of the highlights was an unexpected one, “America the Beautiful.” With every deliberately sour note, and every stormy, chaotic disruption to the stately melody, Mehldau’s concern for the state of the union was made abundantly clear without any words. As he closed, he somberly concluded, “I still love our fractured republic.”
To close the full set, he pointedly introduced “a song by a great Canadian songwriter, from the sovereign nation of Canada,” Neil Young’s “Don’t Let It Bring You Down.” This may be one of my favorite Young songs, and I saw many in the audience mouthing along as Mehldau steering around the sturdy melody, in and out of its familiar lines, before veering into the Beatles “Golden Slumbers,” a seemingly conservative pick, but the playing got progressively more complex, aggressive and assertive, as Mehldau played with his eyes closed, pounding the lower notes with his left hand as his right hand danced over the keys. Then from amidst the playing emerged the toying hints of what became Vince Guaraldi’s “Linus and Lucy,” from
A Charlie Brown Christmas. Back and forth Mehldau went between Guaraldi and the Beatles, touching back on the Young composition with fragmentary allusions before bringing the fifteen-minute medley to a close.
After a brief bow, and an amusing moment when he tried to exit the stage to the green room but was unable to pull back the curtain (it led to a locked door; he figured it out and switched to the other side of the piano), Mehldau walked offstage for a brief break. The encore was a familiar one, played straight and soulfully: Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed.” Very pretty but not especially revelatory.
Full setlist:
https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/brad-mehldau/2025/the-dakota-minneapolis-mn-234eb843.html
Needless to say, this was not a concert t-shirt crowd.
