For Saturday morning listen – our favourite time of the week – I have decided to do a timeline listen of a selection of a few available versions that I know of the Brad Mehldau composition ‘Unrequited‘. The reason is 1/ it is a lovely, poignant and moving composition; and 2/ listening to these treatments reveals some incredible moments. But above all this: all roads lead to the December tribute to Al Foster found on Live at Smoke that Mehldau, famed Miles Davis drummer Al Foster who died only months after the new version was recorded, Joe Martin and Chris Potter are on.
We start in the late-1990s and volume three of the series of albums that made Mehldau’s name, The Art of the Trio.
‘Unrequited’ as part of its luminous bittersweet balladic charms uses rubato (flexible tempo) to create emotional depth. It is primarily in E minor, though it modulates between B major and E minor.
The next version to listen to is the incredible duo treatment with Pat Metheny from the Noughties found on the 5-star classic of the period Metheny / Mehldau.
The piece exhibits Mehldau’s signature ability to play counter-rhythms with one hand while simultaneously playing a melody with the other. Eli Degibri on this Israeli Song version from 2010 which also includes Foster and the Second Great Miles Davis Quintet bassist Ron Carter opens the tune up into a new sphere entirely by leading on soprano saxophone.
Rhythmically Kind of Blue drummer Jimmy Cobb’s beat laid down on The Original Mob is highly distinctive – you get a choppy insistence that is discombobulating but works surprisingly well.
And so finally to the beautiful upcoming version to look forward to recorded just 5 months before Foster died at the age of 82 in May.
Foster was a regular at New York club Smoke where the track was recorded. What a joyously exuberant way to remember him as the interpretation moves from initial rhapsody to devil may care improvising where all involved travel the road less travelled in real time to places the tune has never ventured in quite the same way before through the tears towards the goal of unfettered freedom of expression and their own individual and collective truths couched in strength and the love of kindred spirits in all togetherness.