“That liquid, crystalline tone; those airborne, searching melodies.” – NPR
Pat Metheny was born in Lee’s Summit, MO on August 12, 1954 into a musical family. He started on trumpet at the age of eight, then switched to guitar at age twelve. By fifteen, he worked regularly with the best jazz musicians in Kansas City, receiving valuable on-the-bandstand experience. Then, Metheny burst onto the international jazz scene in 1974. Over his three-year stint with vibraphone great Gary Burton, the young player already displayed his soon-to-become trademarked playing style. Here, he blended the loose and flexible articulation customarily reserved for horn players with an advanced rhythmic and harmonic sensibility. Moreover, this way of playing and improvising was modern in conception but grounded deeply in the jazz tradition of melody, swing, and the blues. With his first album, Bright Size Life (1975), he reinvented the traditional “jazz guitar” sound for a new generation.
Metheny’s versatility is nearly without peer on any instrument. He has performed with Steve Reich, Ornette Coleman, Herbie Hancock, Jim Hall, Milton Nascimento, and David Bowie. Metheny’s body of work includes compositions for solo guitar, small ensembles, electric and acoustic instruments, large orchestras, and ballet pieces and even the robotic instruments of his Orchestrion project, while always sidestepping the limits of any one genre.
Pat Metheny has won twenty Grammy Awards spread out over a variety of different categories. Once, he won seven consecutive Grammys for seven consecutive albums. In 2015 he was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame, becoming only the fourth guitarist to be included. In 2018 he was named an NEA Jazz Master, the nation’s highest honor in jazz.
Recommended for fans of Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Wes Montgomery and Bill Frisell.
