The Way Up Pat

Guitarist, composer, and bandleader Pat Metheny is one of the most successful jazz musicians in the world. He is the only artist to win 20 Grammy Awards in 10 different categories. A consummate stylist and risk-taker, his musical signature melds a singular, euphoric sense of harmony with Afro-Latin and Brazilian sounds, rock, funk, global folk musics, and jazz. His 1976 debut, Bright Size Life, and the self-titled Pat Metheny Group two years later resonated with audiences and critics for its euphoric lyricism, dynamics, and rhythmic ideas.

Unlike almost any other modern musician, Pat Metheny remains uniquely unpredictable. A new Metheny record could be almost anything as the only musician to have won twelve of his twenty Grammy awards in twelve different categories. His recent recording Road To The Sun caused a sensation in the classical music world for its intricate and emotionally satisfying chamber music compositions. At the same time, its immediate predecessor From This Place was Downbeat magazine’s Jazz Record of the Year as an expansive and timeless large-scale work.

It's been nearly twenty years since Pat Martino's comeback from a near-fatal brain aneurysm. In that time he's re-established himself as one of the jazz world's premier guitarists, a technically advanced post bop player who combines forward-thinking musical ideas with native Philly grit; think Pat Metheny with more soul. Think Tank, as the name suggests, finds Martino at his most cerebral, which has its pros and cons. The title track, for example, is a blues of sorts built on an equation based on the letters of John Coltrane's name, which may sound like an exercise for a composition class, but manages to hold together pretty well organically. Coltrane, a Philadelphia mentor of Martino's, is a recurring reference on the album, both indirectly in Martino's intensely spiritual and intellectual approach to the music, and directly on the funk-based original "Phineas Trane as well as on an extended romp through Coltrane's "Africa.

Pat Metheny Trio - Day Trip
EAC+LOG+CUE | WV: 394 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Nonesuch # 376828-2 | Country/Year: US 2008
Genre: Jazz | Style: Contemporary, Free Jazz

…While preceding Metheny releases were more ambitious (THE WAY UP) or piano-oriented (see his albums with Brad Mehldau), DAY TRIP presents the guitarist getting back to basics while losing none of his eclecticism.

Excellent addition to any jazz music collection
Pat Metheny is one of the world's best-selling jazz musicians. He must be the one jazz guitarist whose albums are likely to appeal to lovers of symphonic prog - particularly his epics IMAGINARY DAY and THE WAY UP.

When guitarist Pat Metheny released Orchestrion (Nonesuch) in 2010, it almost immediately became one of his most controversial recordings since Zero Tolerance for Silence (Warner Bros., 1992). Why, in a jazz world, where interaction with other musicians is so fundamental to its spirit, to its raison d'être, would one of the most important guitarists of his generation not only release an album that replaced live musicians with a complex, pneumatic and solenoid-driven beast of an instrument called an Orchestrion, but actually embark on a massive world tour to promote it?

Just because Pat Benatar's longtime guitarist and husband Neil Giraldo gets top-level billing here doesn't mean anything has really changed. Giraldo has backed her since her heyday and while he may have changed his brand of instrument - it looks like a custom Tele copy, judging by the cover - they still turn out music that is essentially the same as the arena rockers of the early '80s, and Benatar sings it the same fashion as before. Which means that Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo Live is part of that celebrated tradition, the "greatest hits live" album, and that may not be a surprise since it is subtitled the "Summer Vacation Tour Soundtrack" which kind of implies that it taken from an oldies tour.