"The Song Is You" is a performance of the Jerome Kern standard from the 1996 live album Alone Together, featuring the trio of Lee Konitz on alto saxophone, Brad Mehldau on piano, and Charlie Haden on acoustic bass. The 64-bar AABA form of this classic Broadway melody provides an expansive harmonic canvas for all three musicians. Konitz opens with two choruses that exemplify his lifelong commitment to spontaneous melodic invention, approaching the familiar changes with the freshness and unpredictability that had characterized his playing since his pioneering recordings with Lennie Tristano in the late 1940s. Mehldau's three-chorus piano solo demonstrates the extraordinary harmonic imagination and rhythmic complexity that would soon make him one of jazz's most celebrated pianists, his lines weaving through the changes with a logic that is at once intellectual and deeply musical. Haden contributes three choruses of bass improvisation that showcase his gift for extracting melody from the instrument's deepest registers. Recorded live at Birdland, the performance captures the trio navigating the tune's substantial length with sustained invention and interactive communication. The gradual acceleration from 225 to 239 beats per minute during Mehldau's solo reflects the natural energy and momentum that characterize the finest live jazz performances.
