Pat Metheny

Patrick Bruce Metheny (/məˈθiːni/ mə-THEE-nee; born August 12, 1954) is an American jazz guitarist and composer.
He was the leader of the Pat Metheny Group (1977–2010) and continues to work in various small-combo, duet, and solo settings, as well as other side projects. His style incorporates elements of progressive and contemporary jazz, latin jazz, and jazz fusion. He has three gold albums and 20 Grammy Awards, and is the only person to have won Grammys in 10 categories.
Metheny was born in Lee's Summit, Missouri. His father Dave played trumpet, his mother Lois sang, and his maternal grandfather Delmar was a professional trumpeter. Metheny's first instrument was the trumpet, on which he was taught by his brother, Mike. Pat's brother, father, and grandfather played trios together at home. His parents were fans of Glenn Miller and swing music. They took Pat to concerts to hear Clark Terry and Doc Severinsen, but they had little respect for guitar. Pat's interest in guitar increased around 1964 when he saw the Beatles perform on TV. For his 12th birthday, his parents allowed him to buy a guitar, which was a Gibson ES-140 3/4.
Pat Metheny's life changed after hearing the album Four & More by Miles Davis. Soon after, he was captivated by Wes Montgomery's album Smokin' at the Half Note which was released in 1965. He cites the Beatles, Miles Davis, and Montgomery as having the biggest impact on his music.
When he was 15, Metheny won a scholarship from Down Beat magazine to a one-week jazz camp where he was mentored by guitarist Attila Zoller, who then invited him to New York City to meet guitarist Jim Hall and bassist Ron Carter.
While playing at a club in Kansas City, Metheny was approached by Bill Lee, a dean at the University of Miami, and offered a scholarship. After less than a week at college, Metheny realized that playing guitar all day during his teens had left him unprepared for classes. He admitted this to Lee, who offered him a job to teach as a professor, as the school had recently introduced electric guitar as a course of study.
He moved to Boston in the early 1970s to teach at the Berklee College of Music under the supervision of jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton and established a reputation as a prodigy. He appeared on Burton's studio recordings, from Ring in 1974 to Passengers in 1977.
In 1974, he appeared on an album unofficially titled Jaco with pianist Paul Bley, bassist Jaco Pastorius, and drummer Bruce Ditmas on Carol Goss's Improvising Artists label—but he was unaware that he was being recorded. The next year he joined Gary Burton's band with guitarist Mick Goodrick.
Metheny released his debut album, Bright Size Life (ECM, 1976), with Jaco Pastorius on bass guitar and Bob Moses on drums. His next album, Watercolors (ECM, 1977), was recorded with Eberhard Weber on bass and Danny Gottlieb on drums, and significantly marked Metheny's first outing with pianist Lyle Mays, who would become his key collaborator in forming the Pat Metheny Group later that year. With Mark Egan on bass, the lineup was set for the group's self-titled debut album, Pat Metheny Group (ECM, 1978).
When Pat Metheny Group (ECM, 1978) was released, the group was a quartet comprising Metheny, Danny Gottlieb on drums, Mark Egan on bass, and Lyle Mays on piano, autoharp, and synthesizer. All but Egan had played on Metheny's album Watercolors (ECM, 1977), recorded the year before.
The second group album, American Garage (ECM, 1979), reached number 1 on the Billboard jazz chart and crossed over onto the pop charts. From 1982 to 1985, the Pat Metheny Group released Offramp (ECM, 1982), a live album, Travels (ECM, 1983), First Circle (ECM, 1984), and The Falcon and the Snowman (EMI, 1985), a soundtrack album for the movie of the same name for which they collaborated on the single "This Is Not America" with David Bowie. The song reached number 14 in the British Top 40 in 1985 and number 32 in the U.S.
Offramp marked the first appearance of bassist Steve Rodby (replacing Egan) and a Brazilian guest artist, Nana Vasconcelos, on percussion and wordless vocals. On First Circle, Argentinian singer and multi-instrumentalist Pedro Aznar joined the group; as drummer, Paul Wertico replaced Gottlieb. Both Rodby and Wertico were members of the Simon and Bard Group at the time and had played in Simon-Bard in Chicago before joining Metheny.
First Circle was Metheny's last album with ECM; he had been a key artist for the European record label but left following disagreements with the label's founder, Manfred Eicher.
Still Life (Talking) (Geffen, 1987) featured new group members: trumpeter Mark Ledford, vocalist David Blamires, and percussionist Armando Marçal. Aznar returned for vocals and guitar on Letter from Home (Geffen, 1989).
With Metheny working on multiple projects, it was four years before the release of the next group record, a live album titled The Road to You (Geffen, 1993). This release featured live versions of tracks from the two Geffen studio albums as well as previously unreleased tunes.
Metheny and Mays have referred to the next three Pat Metheny Group releases as a triptych: We Live Here (Geffen, 1995), Quartet (Geffen, 1996), and Imaginary Day (Warner Bros., 1997). Moving away from the Brazilian-inspired styles which had dominated the releases of the previous ten years, these albums included experiments with hip-hop rhythms, sequenced synthetic drums, free-form improvisation on acoustic instruments, and symphonic signatures, blues, and sonata schemes.
With Speaking of Now (Warner Bros., 2002), new group members were added: drummer Antonio Sánchez from Mexico City, Vietnamese-American trumpeter Cuong Vu, and bassist, vocalist, guitarist, and percussionist Richard Bona from Cameroon.
On The Way Up (Nonesuch, 2005), harmonica player Grégoire Maret from Switzerland was introduced as a new group member, while Bona contributed as a guest musician. The album consists of a single 68-minute-long piece—split into four sections—based on a three-note motif: the opening B, A♯, F♯, and its later variation F♯, A, B.
Metheny has recorded albums under his solo artist billing regularly throughout his career. His solo acoustic guitar albums include New Chautauqua (ECM, 1979), One Quiet Night (Warner Bros., 2003), and What's It All About (Nonesuch, 2011).
Building on the work of his experimental quartets (see § Side projects), Metheny further explored fringes of the avant-garde on Zero Tolerance for Silence (Geffen, 1994), a solo electric guitar outing.
For the album Orchestrion (Nonesuch, 2010) Metheny hand-crafted an array of elaborate, custom mechanical instruments which allowed him to compose and perform as a one-person orchestra. By contrast, his album Secret Story (Geffen, 1992) uses lush orchestral arrangements usually found in movie soundtracks, such as The Falcon and the Snowman (see above) and his own A Map of the World (Warner Bros., 1999) film soundtrack.
Recent solo-billed recordings include From This Place (Nonesuch, 2020), recorded with a variety of guest artists, and the all-guitar collaboration Road to the Sun (Modern Recordings, 2021).
In 2012, Metheny formed the Unity Band with Antonio Sánchez on drums, Ben Williams on bass and Chris Potter on saxophone. This quartet released the album Unity Band (Nonesuch, 2012) and toured Europe and the U.S. during the latter half of the year. In 2013, as an extension of the Unity Band project, Metheny announced the formation of the Pat Metheny Unity Group, with the addition of the Italian multi-instrumentalist Giulio Carmassi.
Outside the Group, Metheny has shown different sides of his musical personality. An early duo billing with Lyle Mays, As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls (ECM, 1981), includes Brazilian percussionist and vocalist Naná Vasconcelos for an elegant set noted for its atmospheric, long-form title track. In 1983, Metheny and Mays wrote music for the Steppenwolf Theater Company's production of Lyle Kessler's play Orphans. It has remained special optional music for productions of the play around the world since.
Metheny ventured into experimental jazz with the quartet releases 80/81 (ECM, 1980), Song X (Geffen, 1986) with Ornette Coleman, and The Sign of 4 headed by Derek Bailey (Knitting Factory Works, 1997).
In 1997, Metheny recorded with bassist Marc Johnson on Johnson's release The Sound of Summer Running (Verve, 1998). The next year, he recorded a guitar duet with Jim Hall (Telarc, 1999), whose work has strongly influenced Metheny's. He collaborated with Polish jazz and folk singer Anna Maria Jopek on Upojenie (Warner Poland, 2002) and Bruce Hornsby on Hot House (RCA, 2005). He has also played on albums by his older brother, Mike Metheny, a jazz trumpeter, among them Day In – Night Out (1986) and Close Enough for Love (2001).
As a young guitarist, Metheny tried to sound like Wes Montgomery, but when he was 14 or 15, he decided it was disrespectful to imitate him. In the liner notes on the 2-disc Montgomery compilation Impressions: The Verve Jazz Sides, Metheny is quoted as saying, "Smokin' at the Half Note is the absolute greatest jazz-guitar album ever made. It is also the record that taught me how to play."
Ornette Coleman's 1968 album New York Is Now! inspired Metheny to find his own direction. He has recorded Coleman's compositions on a number of albums, starting with a medley of "Round Trip" and "Broadway Blues" on his debut album, Bright Size Life (1976). He worked extensively with Coleman's collaborators, such as Charlie Haden, Dewey Redman, and Billy Higgins, and he recorded the album Song X (1986) with Coleman and toured with him.
Metheny made three albums on ECM with Brazilian vocalist and percussionist Naná Vasconcelos. He lived in Brazil from the late 1980s to the early 1990s and performed with several local musicians, such as Milton Nascimento and Toninho Horta. He played with Antônio Carlos Jobim as a tribute, in a live performance in Carnegie Hall Salutes The Jazz Masters: Verve 50th Anniversary.
He is also a fan of several pop music artists, especially singer/songwriters including James Taylor (after whom he named the song "James" on Offramp); Bruce Hornsby, Cheap Trick, and Joni Mitchell, with whom he performed on her Shadows and Light (Asylum/Elektra, 1980) live tour. Metheny is also fond of Buckethead's music. He also worked with, sponsored or helped to make recordings of singer/songwriters from all over the world, such as Pedro Aznar (Argentina), Akiko Yano (Japan), David Bowie (UK), Silje Nergaard (Norway), Noa (Israel), and Anna Maria Jopek (Poland).
Two of Metheny's albums, The Way Up (2005) and Orchestrion (2010), show the influence of American minimalist composer Steve Reich, with rhythmic figures structured around a recurring pulse. Decades earlier, Metheny had appeared on Reich's album Different Trains (Nonesuch, 1987) performing Reich's composition, Electric Counterpoint.
Metheny plays a custom-made 42-string Pikasso I created by Canadian luthier Linda Manzer. He plays it on "Into the Dream" and on the albums Quartet (1996), Imaginary Day (1997), Jim Hall & Pat Metheny (1999), Trio → Live (Warner Bros., 2000), and the Speaking of Now Live and Imaginary Day Live DVDs. Metheny has used the guitar in his guest appearances on other artists' albums. He used the Pikasso on Metheny/Mehldau Quartet (Nonesuch, 2007), his second collaboration with pianist Brad Mehldau and his trio sidemen Larry Grenadier and Jeff Ballard; the Pikasso is featured on Metheny's composition "The Sound of Water". Manzer has made many acoustic guitars for Metheny, including a mini guitar, an acoustic sitar guitar, and the baritone guitar, which Metheny used for the recording of One Quiet Night (2003).
Metheny was one of the first jazz guitarists to use the Roland GR-300 guitar synthesizer. He commented, "you have to stop thinking about it as a guitar, because it no longer is a guitar." He approaches it as if he were a horn player, and he prefers the "high trumpet" sound of the instrument. One of the patches that he has often used is on Roland's JV-80 "Vintage Synth" expansion card, titled "Pat's GR-300". In addition to the Roland, he uses a Synclavier controller.
Metheny was an early proponent of the twelve-string guitar in jazz. During his 1975 tour with the Gary Burton "Quartet" (five people, including Metheny), he primarily played electric twelve-string guitar against the six-string work of resident guitarist Mick Goodrick.
Prior to Metheny, Pat Martino had used the electric twelve-string guitar on a studio album, Desperado, and John McLaughlin had used a double-neck electric guitar with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Ralph Towner was perhaps the first to use acoustic twelve-string guitar extensively in jazz ("The Moors", from Weather Report's I Sing the Body Electric, Columbia, 1972), and Larry Coryell and Philip Catherine made extensive use of acoustic twelve string in alternate tunings at the 1975 Montreux Jazz Festival, later releasing some of the material on their 1976 Twin House album.
Metheny used a twelve-string guitar on his debut album, Bright Size Life (1976), including alternate tuning on "Sirabhorn", and on later albums ("San Lorenzo", from Pat Metheny Group and Travels).
At the age of 12, Metheny bought a natural finish Gibson ES-175 that he played throughout his early career, until it was retired in 1995. After his first tour of Japan in 1978, he began an association with Ibanez guitars, who have since produced a range of PM signature models.
Metheny is the younger brother of jazz flugelhornist Mike Metheny. He lives in New York City with his wife, Latifa (née Azhar), and three children. Latifa has been credited for album photography. Metheny was once in a relationship with Sônia Braga.
Pat Metheny is the only person to have won Grammy Awards in ten different categories.
Partial list of other (non-Grammy) awards and honors for Pat Metheny:
The following is a partial list of Metheny's notable collaborators: