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Pat Metheny Trio Pat Metheny Trio PAT METHENY TRIO Over the course of more than 20 years as a recording artist, Pat Metheny has released album after album, each one brilliantly documenting another aspect of his unique and nearly uncategorizable musical journey. Exhibiting an insatiable creative energy, Metheny has participated in just about every avenue of modern music-making possible. Seemingly bent on blurring and obliterating stylistic boundaries at every opportunity, he has created Grammy-winning albums with his regular Pat Metheny Group, soundtracks for major motion pictures, solo albums, duets with major artists such as Charlie Haden and Jim Hall, and collaborations with other significant major figures such as Ornette Coleman, Steve Reich and many others. But for a certain group of his followers, there is no setting that defines Metheny the musician as clearly as his trio records. Scattered among the chronology of his vast recorded output are three of the most revered, studied and influential guitar trio albums of our time: Bright Size Life, recorded in 1975 with Metheny's first working band, featuring bassist Jaco Pastorius and drummer Bob Moses—a record that literally had the effect of changing the entire language of jazz guitar practically overnight and reclaiming it for a new generation of players; Rejoicing, recorded in 1984 with Metheny's working trio of the mid-'80s, featuring bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Billy Higgins; and Question And Answer, an incendiary meeting of three of the most quick-thinking improvisers of this era—Metheny meets his "main hero" Roy Haynes on drums with the incomparable Dave Holland joining in on bass. In the spring of the year 2000 with the release of his most recent explorations in the trio configuration, TRIO 99>00, Metheny matched the heights of those previous trio releases and then some. That superlative recording, recorded in two days at the end of a two-month summer tour in 1999 with his most current trio of bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Bill Stewart, delivered some of the most impressive modern jazz improvising ever laid down on that sometimes unwieldy- for-the-task six-string monster. Metheny had never seemed more at home with his over and under the bar line phrasing and apparently endless flow of melody. There were also in evidence some startling new developments in the areas of octave displacement and a general intervallic command that sounded essentially new for his instrument—a harmonic fluency that would be rare for the best improvising saxophonists, and practically unheard of in a guitarist. Mixed in with the already highly- refined sense of melodic development that Metheny shares with just a handful of modern improvisers was a fearless and exuberant sense of rhythmic purpose and direction that allowed him to play chorus after chorus of ideas that sounded as fresh as they were swinging. TRIO 99>00 delivered some of the most satisfying Metheny ever committed to tape, which at the time of its release was really saying something. About the only thing left for a fan to hope for would be the one piece of the puzzle that has been notably missing from Metheny's discography to date: a Metheny-produced and sanctioned live recording of his playing in a trio setting. For as much as Metheny's studio recordings have been signposts of his brilliant leaps as an improviser and continued growth as a musician, just about everyone who has ever seen him play in any context live knows that the recordings are just the tip of the iceberg. Metheny, whether with his regular Group, as a sideman with other musicians, or in the hundreds of trio concerts that this particular band has performed all over the world in the past two years, is one of the most exciting live performers in jazz. So, as the rumors of an official live trio release from the TRIO 99>00 lineup began to fan out around music circles worldwide, the anticipation has grown to a fervor. KARSTEN JAHNKE KONZERTDIREKTION GMBH PRESSE / FREHN HAWEL OBERSTR. 14b 20144 HAMBURG TEL: 040 / 41 47 88 30 FAX: 040 / 41 47 88 11 E-MAIL: [email protected] PAT METHENY TRIO > LIVE Warner Bros. Records in association with Metheny Group Productions brings you PAT METHENY TRIO > LIVE, a double CD set that includes performances from the trio's Japanese, European and American tours from 1999 and 2000. Included in these two CDs are new versions of such previous Metheny classics as "Bright Size Life" and "The Bat"; Metheny's unique trio interpretations of some of his most popular "Group" songs such as "So May It Secretly Begin" and "James"; a standard, "All The Things You Are"; and a nearly 20-minute version of the classic Metheny piece "Question and Answer" that must be heard to be believed. There are also three brand new Metheny compositions; "Night Turns Into Day", "Counting Texas" and "Faith Healer", the one that displays a side of Metheny's expansive musical world that has never been documented in any context before. They also show an overall growth of this particular trio as a musical unit that is practically overwhelming in its collective range and impact over the course of the two CDs. About this recording Metheny says, "It is kind of hard for me to believe that it has taken this long to get around to releasing some music in this particular instrumentation in a live context. There is no particular reason for it. It just seems that I have always moved quickly onto the next zone or project after each previous trio tour and have never taken—or had—the time to go through the available recorded material that could conceivably be released as a CD before. The evolution and development of this particular trio with Larry and Bill was so dramatic—it started out really good and just continued to grow and grow—that I just couldn't resist the opportunity to review it and document it in this form." "However," Metheny continues, "I have to admit that I wasn't that interested in doing this if the idea was to just recreate what we did on the studio record—I really felt it had to have a message of its own - a reason for being that was particular." He need not have worried. What we have here— possibly inadvertently on his part but here nevertheless—is a fascinating retrospective of Metheny's entire life as a musician. From the opening eight-note melody of the first track, the title tune from Metheny's debut album "Bright Size Life," we are transported to the earliest moments of Metheny's nascent career, kicked off with those same eight notes 25 years ago. The differences between then and now are immediately striking over the course of the piece and the CD as a whole—the level of control that Metheny has over the instrument has evolved both technically and emotionally and his general maturity as a player and improviser is evident instantly. But what is more interesting is how the essence of his musical message has widened and deepened but still somehow embodies the same kind of fresh bebop-cliche-free exuberance that it did when he quietly revolutionized the jazz guitar tradition with that inimitable sound of optimism and deceptive lyricism some quarter century ago. Over the course of this two hours of music, the listener is taken on a musical tour of an artist who seems to revel in the challenges of what trio playing—and this trio in particular—can offer him. The range of expression included in TRIO > LIVE is stunning in its achievement; this band is literally capable of going from the softest, most tender ballad playing imaginable to moments of ferocious aural energy that would make most of the world's heavy metal bands sound tame by comparison. And no matter which direction of playing is being investigated at the time, it always sounds like the most natural thing in the world for them to be doing. KARSTEN JAHNKE KONZERTDIREKTION GMBH PRESSE / FREHN HAWEL OBERSTR. 14b 20144 HAMBURG TEL: 040 / 41 47 88 30 FAX: 040 / 41 47 88 11 E-MAIL: [email protected] In fact, for those who have listened to the studio record that this band released earlier this year, or Metheny's other trio records for that matter, there are things on this record that some listeners may be quite unprepared for. It is rare to have such a clear documentation of how three players' collective growth as an ensemble can expand so enormously in such a short time through the close proximity of their recorded efforts. With TRIO 99>00 we saw the incredible harmonic openness of the Metheny/Grenadier juxtaposition and the fertile, at times, uncanny, rhythmic connection that permeated every exchange between Metheny and Bill Stewart. TRIO > LIVE embodies and continues those aspects of the trio's chemistry; but there is a raw visceral power and impact on these live recordings that was only hinted at on the studio record. After starting the set with a rousing version of the embryonic Metheny classic "Bright Size Life," the trio jumps ahead to yet another title tune from another of the earlier trio records, "Question and Answer." After impressive individual solos from all three musicians, they launch into a collective coda that for almost ten minutes thunders into territory that has only previously been hinted at in Metheny's recorded work. The intensity of the ending on this piece summons up the "energy" recording of the mid-'60s of Albert Ayler or the best of late-period John Coltrane.
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