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Pat Metheny Group

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The Pat Metheny Group is a jazz band founded in 1978.

Core members of the group are guitarist and leader Pat Metheny, keyboard player and pianist Lyle Mays, and bassist Steve Rodby who joined in 1981. The group has had many additional personnel come and go over the years.

History

Founder Pat Metheny came onto the jazz fusion scene in the mid-1970s with a pair of solo albums; the latter of these, 1977's Watercolors, featured keyboard player Lyle Mays. Metheny's follow-up album formalized this arrangement, featuring several songs co-written with Mays; the album was released as the self-titled Pat Metheny Group on the ECM record label. The second group album, American Garage (1980), was a breakout hit, reaching #1 on the Billboard Jazz chart and crossing over onto the pop charts as well, largely on the strength of the up-tempo opening track "(Cross the) Heartland" which would become a signature tune for the group. This early incarnation of the group included Dan Gottlieb (drums) and Mark Egan (bass). The group built upon its success through constant touring across the USA and Europe. The early group featured a unique sound, particularly due to Metheny's octave-doubled Gibson-guitar and guitar-controlled synthesizer sound and Mays' Oberheim synthesizer. Even in this early state the band played its own compositions exclusively in a wide range of styles from experimental to grassroots.

From 1982 to 1985 the Pat Metheny Group released Offramp (1982), a live set, Travels (1983), and First Circle (1984) as well as The Falcon and the Snowman (1985) a soundtrack album for the movie of the same name. Offramp marked the first appearance of bassist Steve Rodby (replacing Mark Egan) and Brazilian "guest artist" Nana Vasconcelos whose work on percussion and worldless vocals marked the first addition of Latin music shadings to the Group's sound, a trend which would continue and intensify on First Circle with the addition of Argentinian multi-instrumentalist Pedro Aznar, which also marked the group debut of drummer Paul Wertico (replacing Danny Gottlieb). This period became a peak of commercial popularity of the band, especially for the live recording Travels. First Circle would also be Metheny's last project with the ECM label; Metheny had been a key artist for ECM but left over conceptual disagreements with label founder Manfred Eicher.

Then next three Pat Metheny Group releases would be based around a further intensification of the Brazilian rhythms first heard in the early '80s. Additional latin musicians appear as guests, notably percussion player and vocalist Armando Marcal. STILL life (talking), (1987) was the Group's first release on new label Geffen Records, and featured several popular tracks. The album's first piece, "Minuano (Six Eight)" represents a good example of the Pat Metheny group compositional style from this period: the track starts with a haunting minor section from Mays, lifts off in a typical Methenian jubilant major melody, leading to a Maysian metric and harmonically-modulated interlude, creating suspense which is finally resolved in the Methenian major theme. Another popular highlight was "Last Train Home", a rhythmically relentless piece evoking the American Midwest. The 1989 release Letter From Home continued this approach, even more relentlessly Latin, in its bossa and samba pieces. Metheny then again delved into adventurous solo and band projects, and four years went by before the release of the next record for the next Pat Metheny Group, a live set entitled The Road to You, which heaviliy featured tracks from the two Geffen studio albums.

Mays and Metheny themselves refer to the following three Pat Metheny Group releases as the triptych: We Live Here (1995), Quartet (1996), and Imaginary Day (1997). Moving away from the latin style which had dominated the releases of the previous 10 years, these albums were the most wide-ranging and least commercial Group releases, including experimentations with hip-hop drum loops, free-form improvisation on acoustic instruments, and symphonic signatures, blues and sonata schemes. The group integrated new instrumentation and technologies into its work, notably Mays' unique playing technique accomplished by adding midi-controlled synth sounds at command during acoustic solos via a pedal on the piano.

After another hiatus, the Pat Metheny Group re-emerged in 2002 with the release Speaking of Now, another change in direction adding musicians to the band who are one generation younger and thus grew up with the Pat Metheny Group. The new members on the bandstand are the drummer Antonio Sanchez from Mexico City, trumpet player Cuong Vu and bassist and vocalist Richard Bona from Cameroon. The latest release, 2005's The Way Up, is another large concept record which consists of one 68 minute-long piece (although split into four sections.)

Discography

  • Pat Metheny Group (1978)
  • American Garage (1980)
  • Offramp (1982)
  • Travels (1983)
  • First Circle (1984)
  • The Falcon And The Snowman (movie soundtrack) (1985)
  • STILL life (talking) (1987)
  • Letter From Home (1989)
  • The Road To You (1993)
  • We Live Here (1995)
  • Quartet (1996)
  • Imaginary Day (1997)
  • Speaking Of Now (2002)
  • The Way Up (2005)

Books

  • "The Pat Metheny Songbook", Hal Leonhard, ISBN 0634007963
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