Is There Anything at All About Metheny Family

When Pat Metheny was growing upward in the pocket-size Missouri town of Lee's Elevation, his family's abode stood within can't-even-hear-yourself-shouting distance of the Missouri Pacific railroad. trains, tornadoes, freezing winters, hot summers, pocket-sized-boondocks isolation—all fed an imagination that (combined with plenty of practice) fed a legendary music career.

Metheny is one of the best-selling jazz artists ever. He has three gold albums, several Downbeat awards (including in 2020 as best guitarist and for the all-time jazz anthology, for From This Identify), and 20 Grammy Awards: He's the only person ever to win Grammys in 10 categories. He's also a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master.

Metheny has recorded his compositions for his Pat Metheny Group, in duets with Jim Hall and Charlie Haden, for solo guitar and robot orchestra (Orchestrion), soundtracks, swinging trios, noise-fests (Zero Tolerance for Silence), and many side projects. His well-nigh recent album, Route to the Lord's day, is his 50th.

Apart from his ambitious piece of work and touring schedule, a few things make Metheny distinctive: his oftentimes-copied guitar sound and style; beautiful, brilliant melodies that take withstood time; soulful sounds that touch the heart but are never mawkish; endless marvel about the earth around him and ceaseless searching for new ways of expression.

From This Place, on Nonesuch, includes 10 Metheny compositions and features Antonio Sánchez, his longtime drummer; Malaysian/Australian bassist Linda May Han Oh; British pianist Gwilym Simcock; and the Hollywood Studio Symphony conducted past Joel McNeely, besides as Meshell Ndegeocello (vocals), Grégoire Maret (harmonica), and Luis Conte (percussion). On the album, Metheny plays his 1940 Gibson ES-250, Slaman Traveling Sister 150/250, and Ibanez PM2 guitars. From This Place was recorded by engineers Luke Klingensmith, Jay Marcovitz, Phil Levine, and Rich Breen and mastered by Ted Jensen at Sterling Audio. It's bachelor on CD, vinyl, and high-resolution 24/96 download. The vinyl was pressed at Record Industry in the Netherlands.

Route to the Sun (BMG/Modern Recordings), released earlier this year, features Metheny compositions performed by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. The album closes with a performance of Arvo Pärt'southward "Für Alina," performed by Metheny on his Linda Manzer 42-string Pikasso guitar. Pete Karam recorded, mixed, and mastered Route to the Sun; it, too, is bachelor on CD, vinyl, and 24/96 download.

Metheny (center) with the LAGQ. L–R: William Kanengiser, John Dearman, Scott Tennant, and Matthew Greif

Drummer Antonio Sánchez says most his longtime musical partner: "Pat's brain works in a fashion that allows him to be hyperfocused on the chore at manus for very long periods of fourth dimension. When everybody is looking wearied, Pat looks fresh and jovial. I remember when nosotros were rehearsing for the Style Up tour in 2005. This was the nigh challenging piece of music whatever of us had ever played, and we were a little overwhelmed. I take this image of Pat [playing] these ridiculously intricate guitar [parts] and simultaneously making mental notes of what [everyone] else was doing. I saw this every fourth dimension, no matter what tour, band, or project we were doing. Almost superhuman in a weird way."

Ken Micallef: What does the album championship, From This Identify, mean?

Pat Metheny: I didn't get the album championship until the very end, when I was in full freak-out manner. I'd asked Meshell Ndegeocello to sing the melody and write lyrics. Her partner, Alison Riley, wrote the words, which are great. And so one mean solar day I realized that'southward the championship of the album! It's gotten more resonant since the record came out. We are in a weird spot right now. Nosotros, being the world, but definitely our country at the top of the list. The words that Meshell sings go right to that. It'southward also very particular to what the pandemic has brought to the tabular array, the thought of transcendence through promise. Let'due south try to go through this and brand things amend.

Micallef: So, the encompass art of the tornado in the night skies speaks for itself.

Metheny: Tornadoes are very personal for me. My very first retentivity when I was 3 was sitting on my dad'south shoulders. The town next to ours was completely destroyed by a tornado. A good clamper of my springtime life as a child was spent cowering in the basement because of tornadoes. So, tornadoes have a really strong place in my life, and that somehow felt particularly resonant to the song "From This Place" in particular.

Micallef: "America Undefined," also on From This Place, is ane of your longest compositions. At ane betoken at that place are railroad-crossing sounds, which plow into a roaring jet engine. Information technology's similar information technology'due south blowing past your face up. What were you addressing in that slice?

Metheny: This is connected to larger issues of grade and construction and how an improvising musician can be inside the realities of what information technology is to be alive during this fourth dimension. And to technology, the possibilities that exist within engineering science for somebody who's looking to express things, creativity, in my case. I've referenced extremes earlier, like where there's no written material, like Zero Tolerance for Silence, to the current record, Road to the Sunday; that's 100%, every little thing is written out. If we're going to brand an X/Y grid, there'southward likewise the question of, how do you do it/Is information technology a documentary-type approach, meaning you go in, turn on the mikes, you play it once, and that's information technology? Or practise you spend nine months on the snare drum sound? All those things are interesting to me.

I'thou talking about the train stuff you're referencing. That took weeks to become, a really a massive thing. In addition to tornadoes, the house that I lived in for the outset four years of my life was literally 30 feet from the main line of the Missouri Pacific Railroad. We heard that audio all the fourth dimension. The trains would be like two miles long, and then there'd be a 10-minute break and and so there'd exist another train.

Micallef: And so that'southward not a jet engine.

Metheny: It's the sound of a diesel train with the Doppler effect as it goes by. Dorsum in those days, trains would get through little towns really fast. Lee's Summit was a tiny town. We didn't even have a train stop until the early '60s. The train zipping from St. Louis to Kansas City would smash past our house. We were on a lilliputian street that bordered the railroad track. My dad grew upward on that same cake, and my grandpa congenital those houses.

Micallef: You'd hear that sound often?

Metheny: Yeah. I wanted to capture that. Sound has always been a main thing for me. Some of that applies to every electrical guitar thespian: sound, knobs, wires, cords, speakers, that'due south kind of our musical instrument, in a way. None of that is ever foreign to me; it feels like a office of the human activity, and included in that now is the studio itself, which, later the ECM era—which was truly a documentary era where we had two days to tape and a day to mix—once I got to Geffen, nosotros could spend time in the studio. I really comprehend the idea of using the studio itself equally an musical instrument. And that relates to the guitar, all the nerdy things that guitar guys do, I've been doing right from the start. Information technology all figures into that.

Micallef: The focus on trains explains some of your stage sets through the years, too.

Metheny: The train motif has been a big ane. The song "America Undefined" was inspired by James Baldwin'southward essay "The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American." We don't know all the same what it is, this state. It's a dandy idea. But man, the last 4 years have shown we are still so far from any kind of ideal of anything. The song is an expression of that.

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Source: https://www.stereophile.com/content/pat-metheny-his-place