Brad Mehldau Radio

Tim Fitzgerald's Full House

While We're Young

Thirteen miniature journeys, each a complete world in ninety seconds.

In this new album, Samuel Hamish Gray continues his exploration of spontaneous composition — music created entirely in the moment, unpremeditated yet intricately formed. Each piece was conceived, performed, and completed in a single take, bound only by one strict parameter: a duration of exactly one minute and thirty seconds.

Within that constraint lies astonishing freedom. The result is thirteen concise piano works — cinematic, lyrical, sometimes fragile, sometimes dramatic — each a distilled emotional narrative. Gray’s playing moves from shimmering introspection to bold, cinematic resonance, his improvisations sculpted by instinct and refined by long experience in both classical and jazz idioms.

Listeners familiar with his Sirius Suite (2025), a meditation on loss and love, will recognize the same immediacy and tenderness, but here the focus is on compression: each piece a single breath, a fleeting vision, a self-contained journey.

Gray is known for his fully spontaneous solo piano performances in Norway, New Zealand, and beyond, and for his forthcoming long-form work Norgesvenn (2026), recorded as one continuous arc. These new miniatures reveal another side of his artistry — concise, pure, and perfectly balanced between composition and improvisation.

Perfect for reflective playlists, film and documentary use, or simply quiet listening, each piece can stand alone, loop seamlessly, or fade into thought — small universes of sound, carved from silence.

Miniatures

Impromptu à l’aveugle I

Giorno in casa

"That’s what happened to each of them: they crawled inside the piano, underneath its shell, and roused what they had kept hidden beneath its keys."

https://antonindebemels.bandcamp.com/album/la-douceur

Improvised by Olivier Taskin
Recorded and mixed by Antonin De Bemels
Mastered by Yvan Hanon
Picture by @antonindebemels

LA DOUCEUR

Stase

These Are The Vistas

Flim

Native Dancer

Ponta de Areia

Largo

When It Rains

Waves

Finding Gabriel

Born to Trouble

Suite: April 2020

I. waking up

The Rumor

Jazz pianist BRAD MEHLDAU has recorded and performed extensively since the early 1990s. Mehldau’s most consistent output over the years has taken place in the trio format. Starting in 1996, his group released a series of five records on Warner Bros. entitled The Art of the Trio (recently re-packaged and re-released as a 5-Disc box set by Nonesuch in late 2011). During that same period, Mehldau also released a solo piano recording entitled Elegiac Cycle, and a record called Places that included both solo piano and trio songs. Elegiac Cycle and Places might be called “concept” albums made up exclusively of original material with central themes that hover over the compositions. Other Mehldau recordings include Largo, a collaborative effort with the innovative musician and producer Jon Brion, and Anything Goes—a trio outing with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy.

I. waking up

Brad Mehldau

Related tracks