Jazz Band 2.0

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METHENY ON PLAYING LIVE: ãIt offers people a glimpse into what their own potential can be, whether theyâre musicians or not, to see that jazz process in action.ä

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April 11-17, 2002

music

Jazz Band 2.0

METHENY ON PLAYING LIVE: ãIt offers people a glimpse into what their own potential can be, whether theyâre musicians or not, to see that jazz process in action.ä

The Pat Metheny Group makes music for the new century.

by Nate Chinen

Duke Ellington was once asked (by himself, actually) whether the sound of his orchestra varied with each new shift of personnel. “Well,” he replied, “it alters of itself with new music coming in all the time.” He further explained that, after many years in the public ear, the orchestra tended to draw musicians already attuned to its ideals: “When Paul Gonsalves came in the band, he didn’t even have to have a rehearsal. He loved [his predecessor] Ben Webster so much, and he knew everything in the book.”

Today Pat Metheny finds himself in a similar situation. His signature ensemble the Pat Metheny Group, which celebrates its silver anniversary this year, recently experienced a substantial changing of the guard -- with the addition of drummer Antonio Sanchez, percussionist/vocalist Richard Bona and trumpeter/vocalist Cuong Vu. "It's the first time in the fairly long history of this band that we've got three guys [who] are clearly chronologically one generation younger than the rest of us," Metheny observes. "And in all three cases, even though they come from these very disparate places across the panorama of the jazz spectrum and even geographically, the one thing they all have in common is that a part of their musical DNA was formed by listening to Pat Metheny Group records."

Those records run a genre-crossing gamut -- from the jazz-rock energies of American Garage (ECM) to the Brazilian inferences of Still Life (Talking) (Geffen) -- but somehow all manage to reflect a singular aura. Like Ellington, Metheny can be said to own an overarching and instantly recognizable aesthetic ("style" being too inelastic a term). Since his first album, Bright Size Life (ECM) in 1975 -- quite possibly the most auspicious debut of the past 30 years -- the guitarist has explored a vista of windswept plains, a palette of lush but muted colors. As a player he mitigates blinding technique with a disarmingly earnest (and thus effective) brand of lyricism. Compositionally, he and longtime keyboardist/collaborator Lyle Mays tend to favor round, expressive pieces that arc skyward, like fireworks, before bursting. Their music, at its best, sounds inventive, evocative, even noble; at its worst it can seem either too commercially driven or too full of its own pomp. (A 1997 Warner Bros. opus, Imaginary Day, with its electronic fissions and grandiloquent gestures, effectively spanned both extremes.)

The current tour for Speaking of Now (Warner Bros.), the Pat Metheny Group's latest offering, breaks a three-year [13 year, to AMG] hiatus for the band -- during which Metheny toured and recorded with a trio, composed a film soundtrack and contributed to albums by the likes of Michael Brecker, Charlie Haden and Kenny Garrett. It also hearkens back to the unpretentious, mostly acoustic PMG sound that Imaginary Day seemed to have supplanted. In a small irony, Metheny attributes this decision partly to the predilections of his younger sidemen. "Hearing them talk about the band and what that group represented -- that was an inspiration," he explains. "They all really had strong ideas that they wanted to play Pat Metheny Group kind of music. So when Lyle and I got together to hammer out what the tunes were going to be, we steered the music in that direction -- a little bit toward their interests, in what the group should be."

The result is an album that expresses both the distinctive personalities of its members and the steady hand of its author. "About a week after I hired everybody," Metheny muses, "somebody pointed out that those guys are all from different countries. I was like, ŒOh yeah!' It hadn't really occurred to me, because in a way the fact that we all are speaking this very particular (and, in fact, quite difficult) dialect of music sort of transcended anything geographic or nationalistic or racial or any of that stuff. That all pales in comparison to the excitement of finding guys who understand the kind of melody thing that I'm curious about." Yet the new repertoire does spotlight particular musical strengths: Sanchez's propulsive finesse, Vu's patient melodicism, Bona's charisma. Obviously, Metheny and Mays composed with these players in mind -- an approach to writing for a band that, again, has its precedent in Ellington.

It's worth noting that the PMG's gung-ho approach to touring also seems frankly Ellingtonian. The Speaking of Now tour, which began in late February, will reach some 80 cities in 20 countries by the Fourth of July. Metheny has kept a similar pace, more or less continuously, since he started the group -- occasionally logging nearly 300 one-nighters in a year. "We certainly did more gigs per year between 1977 and 1992 than any other band," he contends. "We literally played every place you could play." And like Ellington (the jazz world's undisputed road king prior to '77), Metheny ascribes to this practice a deeper meaning than pure revenue: "I feel like it's especially important to make the effort to get out there and play the music live in front of people. I think it offers people a glimpse into what their own potential can be, whether they're musicians or not, to see that jazz process in action. It's something that has much more cultural relevance than people give it credit for. And I think that's been true throughout the history of jazz."

Talk of history and lineage seem appropriate, despite the fact that the Pat Metheny Group musically resembles the Duke Ellington Orchestra about as much as a telephone resembles a turnip. Delivering the keynote address at the 2001 International Association for Jazz Education Conference, the guitarist eloquently proposed that jazz "seems to demand, in fact, that each new generation makes peace with something specific that is uniquely theirs." It seems clear that the new PMG seeks to address this challenge, as it continually strives for what Metheny calls "a kind of jazz that sounds nothing like the jazz of the 20th century, that is an entirely different thing, a new kind of animal; but one that is still unmistakably connected to the larger jazz tradition."

The Pat Metheny Group plays Thu., April 11, 8 p.m., sold out, Tower Theater, 69th & Ludlow sts., Upper Darby.




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