Both are distinguished by being more popular than players of jazz can ever reasonably expect to be.

Both have managed to keep a working trio on the road for the last decade against all the odds.

And yes, both have been lavishly praised in this column in the past, but there the similarity ends.

One is now an acknowledged master of the keyboard, a formidable technician with a soul to match who has grown from a monstrously-gifted prodigy into a musician of maturity and depth. The other has taken admittedly less extravagant gifts and turned them into something which has seduced the hipsters on the periphery of the jazz audience and is selling records in prodigious numbers.

One is about to have more praise heaped on him. The other isn't.

The former is the American Brad Mehldau, who returns to Ireland for two solo concerts next week, the first in Vicar Street in Dublin on Saturday and then in the Cork Opera House on Monday. Since his first visit here in the early '90s, Mehldau has enjoyed a close bond with the Irish jazz audience and his solo concerts will be the hottest ticket in their respective towns.

Mehldau burst onto the international jazz scene while still a student and immediately attracted the sort of breathless critical attention that has attended him ever since. While not wishing to display any further shortness of breath here, it is fair to say that the pianist has deserved most of it.

From the off, he has artfully inhabited that knife edge where good art lives, showing respect for the tradition that he comes out of, but also being prepared to reach beyond it to create a personal language. His favoured format, the piano trio, led inevitably to comparisons with Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett which flattered more than they necessarily illuminated, and Mehldau eventually spoke out about his irritation at being constantly compared to other pianists, particularly to Evans.

There is however one level on which Evans and Mehldau do compare. Both have taken the piano trio format and used it to reach a very intense and very personal plain of self expression.

It is however as a solo pianist that Mehldau arrives in Ireland this time, a format which in many ways requires more from the listener. Where the trio offers the spectacle of an open dialogue between the musicians, a solo performance requires the listener to be the other side of the conversation. However, close attention in the case of Mehldau will reward and his concerts are warmly, if not breathlessly, recommended.

The latter is Swedish pianist Esbjorn Svensson, whose trio, known as EST, are also regular visitors to Ireland. In this column in the past, EST were praised for bringing the rhythms and sensibilities of rock and dance music into the piano trio format, and for their enterprise in staying together and building an audience for their music by relentless touring. These things are still true, but where EST have disappointed is in their apparent failure to move beyond what was really just a single idea, and one which, to these ears at least, is wearing thin.

However, EST have their following and will not shed many tears over one writer's disillusionment. They play Belfast on Wednesday (24) as part of the Belfast Festival and Cork on Friday (26) as part of the Guinness Jazz Festival, of which more next week.