The members of the original Joshua Redman Quartet—Redman, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride, and Brian Blade—who reunited to release the album RoundAgain in July 2020, twenty-six years after their album MoodSwing, will reunite once again to tour for six nights in April 2022. The tour begins with two nights in New York City, at Blue Note April 18 and The Town Hall April 19, followed by Symphony Center in Chicago, Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Koerner Hall in Toronto, and Symphony Hall in Boston. "A flawless effort," NPR exclaims of RoundAgain. "Each one of them is at the very top of his game now."
The members of the original Joshua Redman Quartet—Redman (saxophone), Brad Mehldau (piano), Christian McBride (bass), and Brian Blade (drums)—who reunited to release the Grammy-nominated album RoundAgain in July 2020, twenty-six years after their album MoodSwing, will reunite once again to tour for six nights in April 2022. The tour begins with two nights in New York City, at Blue Note April 18 and The Town Hall April 19, with concerts at Symphony Center in Chicago, Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Koerner Hall in Toronto, and Symphony Hall in Boston. You can see all the details and get tickets below; for all the latest, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.
RoundAgain, which was nominated for the Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Instrumental Album and Best Improvised Jazz Solo, features seven newly composed songs: three from Redman, two from Mehldau, and one each from McBride and Blade. "A flawless effort," exclaims NPR. "Each one of them is at the very top of his game now." You can pick up a copy on vinyl and CD and hear it here.
Redman says of his first group as a bandleader, which was together for approximately a year and a half: “I realized almost immediately that this band wouldn’t stay together for very long. They were without a doubt, for our generation, among the most accomplished and innovative on their respective instruments. They were already all in such high demand—everyone wanted to play with them! And they all had such strong and charismatic musical personalities—destined to start soon pursuing their own independent visions. I knew better than anyone else just how incredibly lucky I was to have even that short time with them.”
In the intervening decades, each has played with one or more of the others on various occasions, but all four had never properly reunited. “I knew it would happen, but I didn’t know when,” Redman admits. “We were all so busy, and we needed the space, both in our schedules and in our creative development.”
“We would have done it ten years ago if it were up to me,” Mehldau insists. “Josh, Christian, and Brian are all my heroes. It’s like playing with The Avengers.”
Blade adds, “This band is like a turntable where the stylus was lifted but the turntable is still spinning. We just had to drop the needle, and there we were with all of the information we had gathered. It has gotten deeper because of life itself, and because Joshua, Brad, and Christian plumb the depths every day.”
“These guys have grown exponentially,” McBride insists. “They are super-monsters now, and playing with them gave me a hard look at myself. And when you’re intimate creating art, even if you don’t play together for twenty years, you only need two bars to realize what the feeling is about, because the feeling never leaves.”
JOSHUA REDMAN, BRAD MEHLDAU, CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE, BRIAN BLADE ON TOUR
Apr 18 | Blue Note | New York, NY |
Apr 19 | The Town Hall | New York, NY |
Apr 20 | Symphony Center | Chicago, IL |
Apr 21 | Hill Auditorium | Ann Arbor, MI |
Apr 22 | Koerner Hall | Toronto, ON |
Apr 24 | Symphony Hall | Boston, MA |
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