Pat Donohue 2011 Nobody's Fault

Al Di Meola has enjoyed an impressively long career as a recording artist. The guitar virtuoso was only 22 when he recorded his first album as a leader, Land of the Midnight Sun, back in 1976 (although he had joined Chick Corea's Return to Forever at 19), and a 56-year-old Di Meola was still going strong when 2011 arrived…

Featuring recordings from both Pat Metheny's solo albums and Pat Metheny Group releases, Works is an excellent introduction to the artist who helped make ECM Records a successful "boutique" record label. This collection includes seven excellent recordings originally released in the late '70s and early '80s. Works features Metheny's partner, keyboardist extraordinaire Lyle Mays, on four tracks. Metheny and Mays are truly musical soul mates - rarely do two musicians complement each other as well as they do. "It's for You," penned by the duo, is one of the most moving instrumental compositions ever recorded – Metheny wastes no notes during the soaring guitar solo on this beautiful recording. In fact, every track on Works is stunning.

Not long into the ceaseless promotional parade for Born This Way, Lady Gaga’s second full-length record and easily the most anticipated record of the 2010s, a certain sense of inevitability crept into play. It was inevitable that Born This Way would be an escalation of The Fame, it was inevitable that Gaga would go where others feared to tread, it was inevitable that it would be bigger than any other record thrown down in 2011, both in its scale and success. This drumbeat, pulsating as insistently as Eurodisco, is so persistent that there is an inevitable feeling of anticlimax upon hearing Born This Way for the first time and realizing that Lady Gaga has channeled her grand ambitions into her message, and not her music. Gaga has taken it upon herself to filter out whatever personal details remain in her songs so she can write anthems for her Little Monsters, that ragtag group of queers, misfits, outcasts, and rough kids who she calls her own…

When We'll Be Together Again was recorded in 1976, a 31-year-old Pat Martino was four years away from being operated on for the brain aneurysm that would wipe out his memory. The Philadelphia guitarist was also very much at the height of his creative powers - a fact that's hard to miss on this excellent session. Forming an intimate duo with electric pianist Gil Goldstein, Martino is at his most introspective on sparse interpretations of the standards "You Don't Know What Love Is" and "Willow Weep for Me" as well as Henry Mancini's "Dreamsville," J.J. Johnson's "Lament," and Stephen Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns." Martino's lyricism was never more personal than it is on this album.

Featuring recordings from both Pat Metheny's solo albums and Pat Metheny Group releases, Works is an excellent introduction to the artist who helped make ECM Records a successful "boutique" record label. This collection includes seven excellent recordings originally released in the late '70s and early '80s. Works features Metheny's partner, keyboardist extraordinaire Lyle Mays, on four tracks. Metheny and Mays are truly musical soul mates - rarely do two musicians complement each other as well as they do. "It's for You," penned by the duo, is one of the most moving instrumental compositions ever recorded – Metheny wastes no notes during the soaring guitar solo on this beautiful recording. In fact, every track on Works is stunning.