Pianist Brad Mehldau

Presented in collaboration with the Princeton University Art Museum.

Join jazz legend Brad Mehldau for an intimate conversation inspired by his recent memoir, Formation: Building a Personal Canon, Part I—a searching reflection on the years when artistic discovery and personal crisis unfolded side by side. Writing about his early life in New York’s jazz scene, Mehldau speaks with rare candor about addiction, the loss of friends and mentors, and the quiet reckoning required to rebuild a life from within. As he traces the forces that shaped him—Bach’s architecture, the freedom of improvisation, the influence of literary and musical heroes—he considers how music became not an escape from difficulty, but a way through it. This evening invites audiences to reflect on how we carry our struggles into the art we make and the art we love, and how, in hearing our own stories echoed in sound, we may find both recognition and renewal.