Pat Metheny Trio 99 } 00 (w. Larry Grenadier & Bill Stewart) {warner Bros., Usa} 2000

One of the most original guitarists from the '80s onward (he is instantly recognizable), Pat Metheny is a chance-taking player who has gained great popularity but also taken some wild left turns. His records with the Pat Metheny Group are difficult to describe (folk-jazz? mood music?) but manage to be both accessible and original, stretching the boundaries of jazz and making Metheny famous enough that he could perform whatever type of music he wanted without losing his audience.

There's a bit of a role reversal going on with this one. Trumpeter Cuong Vu—a Pat Metheny devotee from the time he first heard the guitarist's Travels (ECM, 1983) as a teenager—eventually came to join the Pat Metheny Group, enhancing the sound of the band on a pair of Grammy-winning albums: Speaking Of Now (Warner Bros. 2002) and The Way Up (Nonesuch, 2005). Now Metheny returns the favor, joining Vu's crew for this expansive outing.

Guitarist Pat Metheny and pianist Brad Mehldau created a stir in 2006 with their wonderful duet recording. On that set, two of the album's ten cuts featured Mehldau's rhythm section of bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard. Quartet is a mirror image: seven of these 11 cuts are full quartet sides. The musical magic established by that collaboration sets the stage for the pair to dig deeper here. It's true that melodic and harmonic invention is the root of each of the tunes here, though that doesn't mean there isn't room to move. Metheny's Way Up recording offered ample of evidence of how compositional sophistication could accomplish virtually anything. There, the players had written parts, but also had room for improvisation within that framework…

Bill Evans - New Conversations (1978) {Warner Bros.}
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© 1997 Warner Bros. | 2-3177
Jazz / Piano / Post Bop

Bill Evans' third and final recording of overdubbed solos differs from the previous two in that he utilizes an electric piano in addition to his acoustic playing. Evans plays quite well on this album (which includes four of his later originals, obscurities by Cy Coleman, Cole Porter and Duke Ellington and "Nobody Else but Me") but the results are less memorable than one might expect for Bill Evans seemed always at his best in trio settings.

In listening to the five years of the Brad Mehldau Trio represented in this box set, one hears the unfolding of a new and significant part of modern jazz history, as the end of the 1990s opened the door on the explosive creative renaissance of the music in the 21st century. Nonesuch has compiled the five releases in the Art of the Trio series, as well as an additional disc of unreleased recordings from the same period (1997-2001), offering a serious reconsideration of what has already been accepted as a "next step" for the jazz piano trio's history. On Vol. 1, Mehldau, bassist Larry Grenadier, and Spanish drummer Jorge Rossy intriguingly and seductively begin uttering the first sounds of their new language via Mehldau's originals, such as "Lament for Linus" and "Ron's Place"…

Cuong Vu Trio + Pat Metheny - Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny (2016) {Nonesuch ‎7559-79466-8}
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© 2016 Nonesuch ‎Records / Warner / MGP | 7559-79466-8
Jazz / Modern Creative / Avant-Garde Jazz / Beyond Jazz / Trumpet / Guitar

Despite the somewhat misleading title, Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny, trumpeter Cuong Vu has a lengthy history with the legendary jazz guitarist that goes back to Metheny's Grammy-winning 2002 album, Speaking of Now. Since then, Vu has played with Metheny enough that he is a regular part of the conversation when discussing the guitarist's more adventurous contemporary works. Despite his pedigree, having graduated from the New England Conservatory and worked with such luminaries as David Bowie, Myra Melford, Laurie Anderson, and others, Vu is a maverick. A highly gifted, forward-thinking musician, Vu often eschews the more clarion, declarative aspects of his chosen instrument in favor of macabre growls, dampened tones, and improvisatory lines that skitter forth with the mad convulsions of a housefly.

Larry Goldings - Big Stuff (1996) {Warner Bros. 9 46271-2}
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© 1996 Warner Bros. | 9 46271-2
Jazz / Soul Jazz / Jazz Funk / Hammond Organ / Guitar

In this, his second major label release, the impressive Larry Goldings explores further possibilities of the Hammond organ in an eclectic presentation including all but the standard organ groove. Nevertheless, the disc always comes back to its most satisfying and inventive moments in dynamic solos that are more firmly rooted. In a sense, this is a tribute to Goldings’ integrated conception, which thrives despite the disparate production.