![]() ![]() What’s It All About (2011) found Metheny bringing this minimalist acoustic conception to covers of pieces by the Beatles, Burt Bacharach, Paul Simon, and other Metheny pop favorites. 2003’s contemplative One Quiet Night was such a release, recorded by Metheny in his home studio with nothing but a single microphone and the deep, mature tonality of his baritone guitar. When it comes to making music, for Metheny, more is quite often more.īut every few years, Metheny chooses to dial things back and presents a fully solo offering, with spare, stripped-down sonic elements and a direct emotional appeal worlds apart in its affect from the grandiose impositions of The Orchestrion Project. ![]() (Guitarists in general seem to draw a larger-than-average percentage of such enthusiasts during my tenure writing for JazzTimes Magazine, I never got more technical in my pieces than I did when writing about guitar players.) Metheny’s music is often marked by its effusive, kaleidoscopic solo runs and occasional forays into wonk-friendly technological esoterica, as in the 2012 video The Orchestrion Project (followed the subsequent year by a double LP of the same name), which found the musician’s guitars accompanied by the titular contraption, a formidable amalgam of mechanically operated electronic and orchestral instruments. I have often regarded Metheny as a sort of jazz counterpart to the likes of Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, or Yngwie Malmsteen, a technique-forward “guitarist’s guitarist” whose discography frequently privileges virtuosity over straightforward melodic connection or emotional engagement, and who as a result tends to attract a particularly tech-savvy contingent of fans who care as much about the gear you’re using as the sounds emanating from that hardware. My balm of choice: Dream Box, the latest LP from contemporary jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, just released the day before. Last Saturday evening, after a fairly hectic few days on the real-world beat, I opted for a homefront evening of intentional downshifting. ![]()
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