A night of jazz giants with Brad Mehldau and Christian McBride

Thanks to the La Jolla Music Society, jazz heavyweights Brad Mehldau (piano) and Christian McBride (bass) paid their first visits to San Diego since 2017 and 2019, respectively.

Each is a giant, indeed a legend, in his own right; on Oct. 19, telepathically feeding off the other’s mastery, they transcended their individual virtuosities.

As their stage patter confirmed, the two first met in New York’s Augie’s Jazz Bar in 1989, and later partnered in the innovative Joshua Redman quartet that produced 1994’s iconic “Mood Swing” album and two later reunion releases, “RoundAgain” (2020) and “LongGone” (2022). In the past few years, they’ve reunited for trio tours, and now are performing as a duo.

If your image of piano-bass duos is mellow, lounge-y standards, then Mehldau and McBride’s La Jolla outing offered some sharp schooling. The eight-song 100-minute program ranged from jazz standards (Charlie Parker’s 1947 “Cheryl;” Jimmy Van Heusen’s “Here’s That Rainy Day”) to modern jazz monuments (Coltrane’s 1960 “Satellite”) to self-penned originals (McBride’s “Shade of the Cedar Tree,” written for pianist Cedar Walton; Mehldau’s “Love Is Fragile”).

Special place was given to cross- genre gems (Bruno Martino’s 1960 “Estate (Summer);” Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home,” where Mehldau took a solo turn; and JaNet DuBois and Jeff Barry’s TV theme song “Jeffersons (Movin’ on Up),” which served as McBride’s solo vehicle. Their encore was a lovely rendering of Stevie Wonder’s 1972 “Golden Lady.”

Dressed in black, Mehldau sat low and far from his Steinway grand, his backside on his bench’s front half, knees angled 20 degrees under the keyboard. Playing as if by feel, eyes often closed, he grimaced or rocked as the music dictated. Clarity and beauty of tone, impeccable swing, improvisatory surety and grace, tasteful restraint — Mehldau has all these to burn. Only in his long solo closing the set finale, “Love Is Fragile,” did he seem to briefly overstay his welcome.

A big man with a big instrument, McBride pawed his “Mother Earth” upright with easy efficiency and idiosyncratic, intuitive touch. In “Movin’ on Up,” McBride simultaneously voiced the bass, vocal and choral parts; and his vibrato, note-bending, percussive string-slapping, and tasteful bowing (in “Love Is Fragile”) showed just how much texture, color, and range a master bassist can deliver. Playing of such skill, musicality, and personality obliterates images of the bass as mere time-keeper or groove-setter.

But the magic lay in Mehldau and McBride’s uncanny interplay. Listening empathetically, they completed each other’s phrases or traded roles (Mehldau sometimes setting the foundational rhythm, McBride sometimes fronting the melody), anticipated each other with counter-lines or intertwined rhythmic and harmonic strands, or simply dropped out to give the other space.

This master class in jazz duo technique made a case for their inclusion among legendary duos like Ellington/Blanton, Evans/Gomez, and Kenny Barron (or Herbie Hancock)/Ron Carter.

The choice of Bruno Martino, Blind Faith, Stevie Wonder, and the Jeffersons theme nicely captured Mehldau and McBride’s omnivorous careers as genre-melding ambassadors of (mostly) American music, not jazz alone.

For his part, Mehldau has written more than a dozen pieces for non-jazz instrumentation, partnered with classical stars Joshua Bell and Renee Fleming, and interpreted the music of the Beatles, Radiohead, and Paul Simon but also Bach and Fauré. McBride has played with everyone from James Brown, Paul McCartney, and Sting to the Philadelphia Orchestra and New York Philharmonic — on top of his funk/RB projects, film/TV work, and artistic leadership of the Newport Jazz Festival and the LA Philharmonic’s “Jazz Series.”

This was, no question, a night of great jazz. But, as Mehldau’s on-stage reference to “our tour here in our troubled republic” hinted, it was also something more ambitious — and ultimately, more healing.