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Pat Metheny (born Patrick Bruce Metheny; August 12, 1954), is an American jazz guitarist and musical composer. Metheny has been a major figure in jazz music for more than three decades with 17 Grammy Awards under his belt. Many critics believe Metheny's most celebrated work comes from his involvement with the Pat Metheny Group (PMG). The PMG is a multi Grammy Award-winning group (with rotating rosters) which Metheny founded in the late 1970s following some work he did with legendary bass guitarist Jaco Pastorious on both his debut album Bright Size Life (1976) and its followup Watercolors (1977). Metheny has been described by some critics as "one of jazz’s sonic geeks, a tech dork forever itching to explore the limits of his sound."^[1]

Metheny was born in Lee's Summit, Missouri and listeners can detect a distinctly Midwestern sound in some of his body of work. Examples include early recordings like Bright Size Life (1976) and New Chautauqua (1979) and later examples like Beyond the Missouri Sky (1997), a collaborative project between Metheny and Ornette Coleman's former double bass player, Charlie Haden.

He has also been known to incorporate South American rhythms and beats in to his music, particularly on some Pat Metheny Group recordings. He has recorded and toured with Brazilian musicians like Pedro Aznar and Nando Lauria and also rock icons like David Bowie. In the mid-1980s Metheny helped reintroduce the music of Ornette Coleman (an idol of his) to a new generation of listeners through the release of the pair's collaboration Song X (1985)—an album which enjoyed critical acclaim from fans and critics alike.

Metheny has a guitar style which can largely be described as being in the tradition of idols of his like Wes Montgomery and Jim Hall, though he has frequently crossed over seamlessly in to instrumental pop on several Pat Metheny Group recordings and has added more mainstream listeners to his audience as a result.^[2]

Patrick Bruce Metheny was born to a musical family in Lee's Summit, Missouri (a suburb southeast of Kansas City) on August 12, 1954. His maternal grandfather was a lifelong professional trumpet player and Pat's older brother Mike is a professional trumpet player of some distinction. Classical music and concert band music were highly regarded in the Metheny household, and Pat began to play trumpet at age seven or eight. He took lessons from his brother Mike, who is five years his elder. Lee's Summit had a country music scene so, for many musicians, the instrument of choice was the guitar.

In an interview with author Joe Barth, Metheny explains, "My family really looked down upon the rock and roll thing and seemed to tolerate the country thing that was so popular in my town. The musicians that my family looked up to were trumpet players like Maurice André or Doc Severinson."

By age eleven Metheny was swept up in The Beatles craze, having seen their movie A Hard Day's Night about fifteen times. Soon his friends were receiving guitars as gifts for birthdays or Christmas and Metheny found himself among those wanting one. His parents viewed the guitar as a secondary instrument and forbade him to bring one in the home. In a 1992 interview with Jay Leno on The Tonight Show, Metheny was asked about how his parents felt about guitars, to which he responded, "They weren't crazy about it at first because, for them you know, I think the guitar kind of represented...you know...all the things that it did in the 60s, about people growing their hair long and all that kind of stuff." After some convincing, his parents finally agreed to let their son purchase a guitar for himself if he raised enough funds working his paper route. By age twelve he had saved his money and purchased his first guitar, a Gibson ES 140 (a rare, three quarters size 175), learning the theme song to Peter Gunn as well as the Batman Theme within a few weeks. Soon after buying it, the Gibson was destroyed on an airlines during a family vacation and his replacement guitar was a Blond Gibson ES-175, which he played throughout much of his career. Metheny also continued playing the trumpet throughout high school.

Although he took a couple of lessons at a local music store, Metheny is largely self-taught on guitar. Most of the instruction he received was far too basic to assist him in playing the music he really wanted to play—songs by The Beatles. One day his brother brought home the album Four & More by trumpet player Miles Davis. Metheny found himself drawn to the recording, stating, "...I had never really heard anything like that. My parents played some Glenn Miller and swing music around the house, but to hear music 'at that level' changed me. It began there and never stopped. I began the process of learning what jazz is all about and it continues to this day."

By age fifteen Metheny had attracted the admiration of the older jazz musicians he played with in Kansas City, as Lee's Summit was not known for its thriving jazz scene. He was playing late-night shows with older musicians and was flunking out of high school as a result. He also performed at regional jazz festivals and became known as an up-and-coming young star on the guitar and jazz circuit. Several scholarship offers soon came to him from prestigious music schools (despite his poor academic record) and he eventually chose the University of Miami School of Music at age seventeen. Metheny, who struggled academically due to an almost singular focus on guitar playing, planned to leave school just a few weeks after beginning. Instead, he was offered a job as a guitar instructor at the university, where he taught for the next year. Metheny was deemed qualified to begin teaching because he was quite a bit more advanced than the other students, largely due to his years on the bandstand in Kansas City.

Metheny got his early break by working as a sideman with Gary Burton's group.^[3] At age nineteen Metheny met the vibraphonist Burton, who was then playing with guitarists Jerry Hahn and Larry Coryell, at a jazz festival in Kansas. Burton took an interest in Metheny and invited the young player to come to Boston, Massachusetts to teach at the Berklee School of Music in 1973. Metheny was nineteen years old. The move and new job allowed Burton to have a better look at Metheny, who he considered to be a prospective new addition to his band. He was the youngest musician to ever be on the Berklee staff, and he received an honorary doctorate from the school in 1996.^[3] While at Berklee Metheny taught advanced improvisation classes and some of his students there went on to make careers for themselves, such as guitarist Mike Stern. In 1974 Metheny working with groups led by Gary Burton.^[4] playing a Fender Electric XII 12-string guitar.

Metheny also recorded an album with Jaco Pastorious in 1974 appropriately titled Jaco, which is not as well-known as the identically named album of 1976 for Epic Records. 1974's Jaco also includes Bruce Ditmas on drums and Paul Bley on keyboards (Bley was also producer).^[5]

Metheny's first studio album was 1976's Bright Size Life for the German ECM record label, an album featuring a trio of himself on guitar, Jaco Pastorious on fretless bass and Bob Moses on drums. Larry Kart, author of the book Jazz In Search of Itself, detects traces of bluegrass and country music in this recording, something which is attributed to Metheny's American mid-west upbringing.^[4] The album also shows a fondness for "clear melodic lines" mixed with a bit of "country twang" and Metheny pays tribute to Ornette Coleman by performing his medley "Round Trip/Broadway Blues." Bright Size Life sold 1,200 copies in its first year and has since sold hundreds of thousands of copies.^[6]

Following the release of Bright Size Life, Metheny put together a touring quartet which consisted of Danny Gottlieb on drums, Mark Egan on electric bass and Lyle Mays on keyboards. The quartet soon gained a national reputation for playing one-nighters throughout the country.^[7] Metheny's second studio album for ECM was 1977's Watercolors. As critic Richard S. Ginell of allmusic points out, "As the title suggests, there are several mood pieces here that are suspended in the air without rhythmic underpinning...Metheny's softly focused, asymmetrical guitar style...is quite distinctive even at this early juncture."^[8] Watercolors features a quartet consisting of Metheny, Lyle Mays on acoustic piano, Danny Gottlieb on drums and Eberhard Weber on double bass. Although the album does not feature Mark Egan, many critics consider this to be the first Pat Metheny Group release.^[8]

Metheny's first official Pat Metheny Group studio album was released in 1978. The album is appropriately titled Pat Metheny Group and critic Scott Yanow writes, "The music is quite distinctive, floating rather than swinging, electric but not rockish, and full of folkish melodies."^[9]

In 1979 Metheny released his fourth album New Chautauqua, an innovative third recording for the ECM record label featuring some layered tracks.^[10] A non-Pat Metheny Group solo project, New Chautauqua is remembered most for a standout title track, which critic Thom Jurek calls "a euphoric, uptempo, multi-layered guitar and bass folk dance."^[11] The album features Metheny performing on six and twelve-string guitars, a hollow body electric guitar and bass. Music author André Bush writes, "His chordal changes on this album include folk-style strumming, country-style fingerpicking and combinations of traditional jazz and folk harmony."^[12]

Metheny recorded with artist Joni Mitchell in 1979, heard on her 1980 album Shadows and Light.

Along with the release of American Garage in 1980 came mainstream popularity and mass-market acceptance for Metheny's music.^[3] The 1980s were a decade in Metheny's career in which he attained gold record status on a number of his melodic, Brazilian flavored offerings, including 1983's Travels, 1984's First Circle, 1987's Still Life (Talking) and 1989's Letter from Home. The 1980s were a decade marked by a number of important side projects with musicians like Charlie Haden, Jack DeJohnette, Michael Brecker, and Dewey Redman on 80/81 (1980), Haden and Billy Higgins on Rejoicing (1983), David Bowie on The Falcon and the Snowman (1984) soundtrack, and Ornette Coleman on Song X (1985).^[3]

Metheny's second Pat Metheny Group release (and his first studio album of the 1980s) was a tribute to garage bands around the United States. The 1980 album (recorded in 1979) is appropriately titled American Garage and, compared to its predecessor, this album is more "rock-oriented."^[7] Some have described the Metheny sound as being "very bright," heard particularly well on this album. Concerning this, Metheny has said, "On American Garage I used the prototype of Lexicon's delay which is why it sounds so bright. I didn't quite know how to use it correctly. That became what Lexicon called the Primetime and I was sort of involved in the development of it."^[13] Richard S. Ginell writes, "On the title track, Metheny digs in and displays some authoritative rock-oriented licks and intensity, and the rhythms on 'The Search' have a slight, at times asymmetrical Latin feeling. The nearly 13-minute 'The Epic' finds the Metheny group developing some real combustion in the improvised sections as Metheny, keyboardist Lyle Mays, bassist Mark Egan and drummer Danny Gottlieb grow tighter as a unit."^[14]

Metheny also released 80/81 in 1980, an album which "revealed a wide-ranging vision of jazz" featuring tenor saxophone players Dewey Redman and Michael Brecker.^[15] The album also features Ornette Coleman's one-time double bass player Charlie Haden and Jack DeJohnette on drums. According to music critic Robert S. Ginell, "Pat Metheny's credibility with the jazz community went way up with the release of this package, a superb two-CD collaboration with a quartet of outstanding jazz musicians that dared to be uncompromising at a time when most artists would have merely continued pursuing their electric commercial successes."^[16]

In 1985 Metheny finally recorded with his idol Ornette Coleman on a studio album titled Song X. The album features Metheny, Coleman, Charlie Haden, Jack DeJohnette and Ornette Coleman's son Denardo Coleman. This album helped to further establish Metheny's street credibility in the jazz world and also brought the music of Ornette Coleman to a larger audience.^[7] Jazz critic Brian Olewnick writes, "The music itself bears strong similarities to that of Coleman's Prime Time ensembles wherein all players solo at once, bracketed by the themes of the piece. Metheny often manages to be a quite expressive second voice, racing along beside the master saxophonist, offering alternative strategies and never showboating."^[17] The album's opening track is a 13-minute piece titled "Endangered Species" which one writer describes as a "sonic assault" which listeners will either love or hate instantly.^[18]

The Pat Metheny Group won a Grammy Award for their 1987 album Still Life (Talking), a recording which has a "distinctive mix of North and South American vernaculars."^[19] Metheny, long a fan of Brazilian musicians like Antonio Carlos Jobim, credits Milton Nascimento as the inspiration for the wordless vocals found on the album. The group returns to the Latin rhythms which were present on their previous album, First Circle.

• Jaco (1974) (Jaco Pastorious album) Pat Metheny guitar, Jaco Pastorious bass guitar, Bruce Ditmas drums, Paul Bley keyboards.^[5]
• Ring (1974) (Gary Burton album) Pat Metheny guitar, Gary Burton vibraphones, Eberhard Weber double bass]
• Dreams So Real (1975) (Gary Burton Quintet album) Gary Burton (vibes), Pat Metheny (guitar), Mick Goodrick (guitar), Steve Swallow (electric bass guitar]], Bob Moses (drums)
• Shadows and Light (1980) by Joni Mitchell
• Ross-Levine Band (1981) by the Ross-Levine Band

Pat Metheny lives in the Upper West Side with his French-Moroccan wife, Latifa. He has two sons, Jeff Kaiis and Nicolas Djakeem.

Pat Metheny has been described as "a guitarist whose respectful approach to the genre's evolution has made him an icon among even the staunchest jazz purists. Versatile and innovative, Metheny favors a tone abundant with chorus and delay, but free of distortion."^[20]

• Goines, Wayne E. (2001). Emotional Response to Music: Pat Metheny's Secret Story. Edwin Mellen Press.
• Metheny, Pat (2000). Pat Metheny Songbook: Lead Sheets (Guitar Book). Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 0634007963.
• Metheny, Pat (2003). Pat Metheny - Question and Answer (Guitar Recorded Version). Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 0634046136.
• Metheny, Pat (2005). Pat Metheny - One Quiet Night (Guitar Recorded Version). Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 0634066633.
• Niles, Richard (2009). The Pat Metheny Interviews: The Inner Workings of His Creativity Revealed. Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 1423474694.

Over his career Pat Metheny has received thirty-three Grammy award nominations, including seventeen won Grammy awards (seven won in a row for seven consecutive Pat Metheny Group recordings. The Pat Metheny Group has won ten Grammy awards during its run. For a list of all awards Pat Metheny has won, please see List of awards received by Pat Metheny.

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