Brad Mehldau launches a ten-day, seven-city European tour with fellow pianist and longtime friend Kevin Hays, featuring music from Modern Music, their 2011 collaborative album with composer Patrick Zimmerli, in Manchester, England, tonight. The tour includes stops in Vienna, Zagreb, Zurich, Birmingham, Paris, and Porto. In March, Mehldau is joined by drummer Mark Guiliana for a month-long tour of their duo project, Mehliana, then returns to the US for a run of duo dates with Chris Thile in April. 

Modern Music, a collaboration between pianists Brad Mehldau and Kevin Hays and composer/arranger Patrick Zimmerli is out this week. The album features pieces written by each of the three musicians as well as works by Reich, Coleman, and Glass, performed by the two pianists in arrangements by Zimmerli. The New York Times says the pianists bring "a high sheen to some choice material." The Financial Times gives the album a perfect five stars. MusicOMH calls it "another fascinating and technically remarkable addition to Mehldau’s body of work." The Guardian, reviewing Mehldau's live show with Chris Thile in London on Friday, says their "musicality and sympathy for each other's emerging ideas made it an unexpected tour de force."

As announced last month, Modern Music, a collaboration between pianists Brad Mehldau and Kevin Hays and composer/arranger Patrick Zimmerli, will be released by Nonesuch on September 20. Now comes the album's cover, which features American Modernist painter Charles Sheeler's Classic Landscape. The album is available for pre-order in the Nonesuch Store with an instant download of the title track included at checkout. All About Jazz, reviewing Mehldau's latest solo album, Live in Marciac, raves: "It's a stunning document that somehow manages to satisfy the most basic melodic appetites while still confounding conventional understanding of human capability."

Nonesuch Records releases Modern Music, a collaboration between pianists Brad Mehldau and Kevin Hays and composer/arranger Patrick Zimmerli, all longtime friends, on September 20, 2011. The album features pieces written by each of the three musicians as well as works by Steve Reich, Ornette Coleman, and Philip Glass, performed by the two pianists in arrangements by Zimmerli. Nonesuch Store pre-orders include an instant download of the title track.