You walk into a dimly lit jazz club expecting Cole Porter and Gershwin, and instead the pianist plays a Radiohead or Soundgarden song with the mathematical precision of Bach. This episode explores Brad Mehldau, born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1970, adopted by an ophthalmologist and a homemaker, and raised in West Hartford, Connecticut, where he picked out Top 40 melodies by ear before a piano teacher introduced classical repertoire and he discovered Oscar Peterson and John Coltrane at 14.

The conversation explains how Keith Jarrett's Bremen/Lausanne album showed him classical structure could live inside jazz improvisation, his 1988 move to New York and the New School, and the 1994 trio with Larry Grenadier and Jorge Rossy that launched The Art of the Trio series. It covers the lazy Bill Evans comparisons, his 1990s heroin addiction and th ...