Pat Metheny Albums (41)
What The Critics Say
The Way Up is the Pat Metheny Group's debut offering for Nonesuch Records. Comprised of a single, sprawling, 68-minute composition by Metheny and Lyle Mays -- divided into four sections on CD -- it is an unprecedented new direction for the band. The lineup is the same as on the live Speak of Now from 2003 -- Metheny and Mays on keyboards, bassist Steve Rodby, drummer Antonio Sanchéz, and trumpeter/vocalist Cuong Vu. New to the roster is Swiss/American harmonicat Gregoire Maret. While the sound here is instantly recognizable as PMG, it is dazzling and labyrinthine in shape, sound, and texture. Painstakingly composed, The Way Up also offers large open sections for solo improvisation and group interplay. The work's theme is stated in part one, unfolding gradually as skeletal layered guitars, samples, and other gentle electronics ease the frame into view, Sanchéz's drumming creating an insistent pulse. Mays' piano and Metheny's guitar engage in contrapuntal arpeggios and Vu enters haltingly with the actual line before the ensemble engages it as a whole. Brief melodic interludes usher in the longish second section seamlessly, where lyric fragments become full-blown statements, as the band's trademark restrained dynamic slips in unobtrusively before erupting into sheer euphoria with layered, crunchy, and fat six-strings, lilting harmonicas, and trumpets in tandem, all buoyed by Mays and Rodby, who underscore Sanchéz's skittering cymbal dance. As it progresses, the band takes more chances, walking out onto a ledge and simply jumping off -- while never losing the deep, lush lyricism inherent in the composition's body. The thematic body and the hook at its core are infectious. These, too, open inwardly to an entirely new set of musical ideas in the middle of the section that changes no less than three times in its 26-minute duration. Mays' piano, an acoustic guitar, and Rodby's fretless bass tiptoe ghostlike into part three before Vu once more shimmers and spatters colorful notes across the top in a hush before allowing Maret to bring the entire line into being. Spare, careful, and emotionally moving, it builds until the entire band gels and cracks it into a breezy elegant walk through airy harmonics and slippery rhythms before notions of counterpoint, dense syncopated rhythmic figures (à la Steve Reich), and tight, tense dynamics segue into the final section. Here is where all previous elements come together into a swinging whole. Fueled by Mays' ostinato in the intro, Metheny's soloing winds around the outside, punctuating and stretching it as electronics paint the backdrop. The band locks into the groove before Maret and Vu add banners of expressionistic color. The Way Up feels more like a jazz concerto than anything else. If anything, it may actually be the record Metheny and Mays have been trying to make for over two decades. It is the place between the cracks, where defined genres disappear into a poetic whole and what emerges is something utterly new, guided and inspired by the limitless creativity of the jazz tradition. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Pat Metheny by himself with an acoustic guitar -- for longtime fans it might not get any better. Always interested in blending jazz with folk and pop, the guitarist does just that, focusing heavily on the folk end of things on One Quiet Night. Featuring a nice afterglow interpretation of Norah Jones' hit "Don't Know Why" and an unexpected reinterpretation of "Ferry Cross the Mersey" which turns the Gerry & the Pacemakers classic into a poignant lament, the album also showcases Metheny as a melodic pop composer. "Song for the Boys" sounds surprisingly like an instrumental take on early-'80s British pop à la the Smiths, while "Last Train Home" brilliantly mixes Metheny's knack for taking simple chord progressions and beautifully tweaking them with odd harmonies. Perhaps a bit light for some straight-ahead jazz fans, listeners interested in thoughtful, folky, jazz-inflected ballads will find this rapturous. ~ Matt Collar, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Speaking of Now finds guitarist Metheny leading a retooled Pat Metheny Group; in addition to longtime core members, keyboardist Lyle Mays and bassist Steve Rodby, the Group now includes drummer Antonio Sanchez, trumpeter/vocalist Cuong Vu, and Richard Bona, who's best known as a bassist, but who functions primarily as the Group's percussionist/vocalist. The result is an exquisite album that features fresh new musical perspectives while losing none of the Group's familiar wide-ranging, melodic, always accessible sound. Most of the tracks on Speaking of Now were composed by Metheny and his longtime collaborator Mays, although three tracks were composed solely by Metheny. There's a buoyant feel to this album that is not to be confused with lightness. This is complex, intricately detailed music that reveals additional layers with each listening. Metheny seems to delight in discovering the myriad means by which his prodigiously accomplished bandmembers can provide coloration to the compositions, both within the larger group and in solo spotlights. Sanchez's rhythmic agility and sensitivity is featured throughout, particularly on "The Gathering Sky," which begins as a sparkling, piano-led number and then transforms into a grooving band jam. One of the album's many solo highlights comes during "Proof," where Vu turns in a poignantly lyrical trumpet solo that is followed by an electrifying, steadily intensifying solo by Mays. Vocals have long been part of the Metheny Group sound, but now he is utilizing them in new ways; "Another Life" opens with Bona and Vu harmonizing on a chorale that leads into the artist's delicate acoustic guitar work, while Bona provides sweet vocalizing over Metheny's guitar on the beautiful, soaring "You." Every track on Speaking of Now possesses a distinct beauty and eloquence. This is a superb offering that is not to be missed. ~ Lucy Tauss, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Originally released in 2002 in Europe and Japan, Upojenie (Ecstasy) is a collaboration between Pat Metheny and superstar Polish vocalist Anna Maria Jopek. It came into being after Jopek approached the guitarist at a jazz festival in Warsaw in 2001. Her original idea was to perform some of her own work, some of Metheny's, and some Polish folk songs (exactly what happened). The collaboration was recorded over four months in Poland; it is something wholly other than the sum of its parts might suggest. Co-produced by composer Marcin Kydrynski (Jopek's husband) and Metheny, with Jopek and Pawel Bzim Zarecki, this set marries together the guitarist's signature meld of jazz, pop, and American forms with electronics, early folk melodies, classical melodies, and arrangements with exotic instrumentation and Jopek's otherworldly but gentle voice. For Metheny fans, this is a unique opportunity on two fronts: to hear new versions of his own tunes with different arrangements, titles, and lyrics, as well as the opportunity to be introduced to an immense talent. Now that the set has been released stateside, it becomes an opportunity for fans of contemporary jazz and sophisticated adult pop as well. The set commences with the duet "Cicy Zapada Zmrok" (Here Comes the Silent Dusk), a traditional evening prayer sung by Jopek with Metheny on the 42-string Pikasso guitar. It's skeletal, ethereal, and haunting, yet in Metheny's hands, the melody transcends its origin and becomes a song that could have been sung on the North American plains as well as in Eastern Europe. Another duet, "Biel" (Whiteness), written by Kydrynski, features the singer buoyed by Metheny's classical and baritone guitars. It feels spacious enough to have been recorded in a church, but its roots are in samba. These tracks are the anomalies on the album, however. More often Metheny and Jopek are accompanied by a full band mainly comprised of crack Polish session players, including the great pianist Leszek Mozdzer. Check the version of Metheny's "High Tide, Love Tide, the Breath of Time...," titled "Przyplyw, Odplyw, Oddech Czasu..." (Tell Her You Saw Me) here, with lyrics by Magda Czapinska. The nearly whispered, restrained multi-tracked vocals, a soprano guitar, and lithe basslines, acoustic piano, loops, timpani, and percussion create a web of gossamer and ether before the tempo changes and all sounds seem to bleed into one warm blanket of sound with the considerable emotions in this music all on display. "Are You Going with Me," the original single from this set, is an instrumental with wordless vocals that evolves from the arrangement found on Offramp into something far more folkish and mysterious. Jopek's own "Czarne Slowa" (Black Words) is a deeply sad, piano-driven love song, a ballad with somber overtones hinting at an intricate folk-jazz hymn. The nostalgic "By On Byl Tu" ("Let It Stay" from the Pat Metheny Group's Travels) becomes a hymn of longing and homecoming with the guitarist's classical guitar kissed by Mozdzer's piano, upright bass, and drums. But in Jopek's round, warm, seemingly ageless vocal, this song is almost a lullaby, with gorgeous interplay between the instruments. The domestic issue of this set contains two bonus cuts including a live number. Metheny fans who couldn't afford the import should jump on this, and those who have an interest in sophisticated pop singers from Stacey Kent to Inara George should consider this as well. Upojenie is international jazz as poetry in motion. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
This two-disc release documents performances from the 2000 world tour of the Pat Metheny Trio, featuring Larry Grenadier on bass and Bill Stewart on drums. Like the trio's spectacular studio release earlier the same year, the live album draws on material that spans Metheny's career. The opener, in fact, is "Bright Size Life," the first track from Metheny's 1976 debut album of the same name. That this song was first played by the late supremo of the electric bass, Jaco Pastorius, gives Grenadier's acoustic bass interpretation a certain historical import. Another surprise is "Unity Village," which Metheny played as a solo piece on Bright Size Life; here it's heard with the full trio. Quite remarkably, Metheny manages to integrate all his various manifestations from over the years in this one simple group. One minute he's a pastoral melodicist ("The Bat," "Night Turns Into Day"), the next a post-bop sharpshooter ("All the Things You Are," "Giant Steps," "Soul Cowboy"), then an avant-noise experimentalist ("Faith Healer"), then a quirky multi-instrumentalist ("Counting Texas," for fretless 12-string guitar, and "Into the Dream," for 42-string guitar). Many of the tunes have appeared on Metheny albums past, but they're all thoroughly reinvented here. On that note, if you don't go for the mainstream sound of the Pat Metheny Group, you owe yourself a listen to "James" and "So May It Secretly Begin," two PMG staples that Metheny puts through the wringer, giving them new life as vehicles for burning trio improvisation. Paradoxically then, Trio Live can almost be thought of as a Metheny retrospective, even as it represents a bold step forward. The guitarist's stature is bolstered enormously by Grenadier and Stewart, who work a great deal but are still fresh, new faces on the jazz scene. And as for Metheny's playing, it seems to improve exponentially by the decade. ~ David R. Adler, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Mixing up his pitches just to keep his fans off balance as always, Metheny returns to the strict jazz-guitar trio format for the first time in a decade, in league with a couple of combative, unintimidated partners. At the age of 45, Metheny leaves no doubt that he has become a masterful jazz player, thoroughly at home with even the most convoluted bebop licks ("What Do You Want?") yet still as open as ever to ideas outside the narrow mainstream, as illustrated in the country-western-tinged phrasing on "The Sun in Montreal." Bassist Larry Grenadier propels his own voice prominently into the texture, even when walking the fours, and drummer Bill Stewart does not hesitate to go against the grain of Metheny's ideas. There is a slow, almost bossa nova-like take on "Giant Steps" that works unexpectedly well; it actually becomes a lyrical, gliding thing. Bye Bye Birdie's "Got a Lot of Livin' to Do" gets a rare contemporary cover, and why not? it's a good tune that holds up, even when fractured as creatively as it is here. There are also a few songs on acoustic guitar that sound like embryonic soundtrack material: "Just Like the Day," "We Had a Sister," and "Travels," the latter being Metheny's first studio recording of a tune that was recorded live 17 years before. Metheny's brigade of jazz buffs will savor this. ~ Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide
'Move to the Groove'
Release Date 11/1/1999
Tracks 7
Label West Wind Latina
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Guitarist Pat Metheny and the Heath Brothers playing together? At first glance it might seem a bit illogical, but Metheny has always been a flexible player, able to play a variety of different styles. At a concert in France on January 28, 1983, he sat in with tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath, bassist Percy Heath, and drummer Albert "Tootie" Heath on a few basic (and often blues-oriented) originals ("Sassy Samba," "Arthurdoe," and the blues "Moove to the Groove"), plus "All the Things You Are." Metheny, doubling on guitar synthesizer (which dominates "Sassy Samba"), sounds quite happy performing with the swinging Heaths and the combination works quite well. In addition, Metheny has an unaccompanied and mostly melodic "Guitar Improvisation." This CD concludes with two selections from a completely unrelated concert from Seattle in 1988. Trombonist Julian Priester is prominent in a group also including altoist Denny Goodhew, guitarist Robben Ford, Ralph Towner (normally a guitarist) on synthesizer, bassist Charlie Haden, drummer Jerry Granelli, and an unidentified wordless vocalist on one number. The music is atmospheric and the unusual group somehow blends together, particularly on the blues "I Could See Forever." Worth searching for. ~ Scott Yanow, All Music Guide
'All the Things You Are'
Release Date 6/8/1999
Tracks 11
Label Fruit Tree
See Album Tracklist and Review
