Apr 11, 2023 10:47 AM
Brad Mehldau Tells His Story
At the tail end of 2022, Brad Mehldau took advantage of a New York sojourn to play piano with old friends at Smalls…
Gilad Hekselman’s forthcoming Ask For Chaos finds the guitarist performing in a pair of separate trios across the album’s 10 tracks.
(Photo: Josh Goleman)Guitarist Gilad Hekselman is set to issue a new disc, Ask For Chaos, his sixth leader date on Sept. 7 through his own Hexophonic Music imprint in cooperation with Motéma Music.
The album’s split between performances by two separate trios supporting the guitarist: gHex Trio (bassist Rick Rosato and drummer Jonathan Pinson) and ZuperOctave (keyboardist Aaron Parks and drummer Kush Abadey), the latter performing on “VBlues.” Portions of the pending release with ZuperOctave hedge a bit closer to fusion territory than Hekselman’s previous work, but tastefully so, meting out the overtly processed gestures to break up offerings by the more tradition-focused trio.
“‘VBlues’ is a tune I wrote dedicated to Victor Baker, the luthier who built my guitar,” Hekselman said. “I was in his shop while he was fixing mine up and this melody, pretty much in it’s entirety, came to my head. So, I recorded it and went home to write it down. I love this take—it’s the same one that made it to the album. It’s interesting to me, and it has happened to me before, that sometimes the best takes are the ones we do when the camera crew is there. I guess we do better playing for an audience, even if it’s just two or three people. Aaron and Kush really capture here what I had in mind for this band. On one hand, an electronic heavy sound; on the other, playing in the moment with attention to detail and to what chaos has to offer.”
For additional information about the album, visit the Motéma website. DB
“Perhaps that’s a key to what makes me tick — a very strong curiosity, which makes me a perpetual fanboy of whatever I’m discovering,” Mehldau says.
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