For this month’s Crossroads, John Wheatcroft looks at a jazz musician who is undeniably one of the world’s most significant guitar players, and a master of the instrument.
Pat Metheny is a phenomenal jazz guitarist, an equally incredible composer, improviser and all-round musician. From the early 1970s and while still in his teens, Metheny began to gain exposure as a member of vibraphonist Gary Burton’s band, on fledgling recordings with bass virtuoso Jaco Pastorius and as the youngest lecturer to teach at the prestigious Berklee College of Music. From that point to this, Pat’s career has been staggeringly fruitful, as a band leader with the Pat Metheny Trio and Pat Metheny Group, in collaboration with artists such as Michae lBrecker, Ornette Coleman, Brad Mehldal, John Scofield and Chris Potter, as a sideman for Joni Mitchell, Joshua Redman, Bruce Hornsby and many more, and a solo performer, with ambitious, groundbreaking projects such as his Orchestrion Project and on his solo acoustic album, One Quiet Night.
He has received over 30 Grammy nominations across over a dozen different categories and even at this stage in his remarkably impressive career, continues to develop and grow as an artist and player.
Pat has successfully achieved the holy grail in jazz, creating a truly unique voice on his instrument while still sounding completely connected to the history and the vocabulary of the idiom, so while you can clearly discern the influence of players such as Wes Montgomery and Jim Hall, this is balanced with a more horn-like vocabulary taken from John Coltrane,
