Pat Metheny

Speaking of Now finds guitarist Metheny leading a retooled Pat Metheny Group; in addition to longtime core members, keyboardist Lyle Mays and bassist Steve Rodby, the Group now includes drummer Antonio Sanchez, trumpeter/vocalist Cuong Vu, and Richard Bona, who's best known as a bassist, but who functions primarily as the Group's percussionist/vocalist. The result is an exquisite album that features fresh new musical perspectives while losing none of the Group's familiar wide-ranging, melodic, always accessible sound. Most of the tracks on Speaking of Now were composed by Metheny and his longtime collaborator Mays, although three tracks were composed solely by Metheny. There's a buoyant feel to this album that is not to be confused with lightness. This is complex, intricately detailed music that reveals additional layers with each listening. Metheny seems to delight in discovering the myriad means by which his prodigiously accomplished bandmembers can provide coloration to the compositions, both within the larger group and in solo spotlights.

Japanese Edition with bonus track.
Speaking of Now finds guitarist Metheny leading a retooled Pat Metheny Group; in addition to longtime core members, keyboardist Lyle Mays and bassist Steve Rodby, the Group now includes drummer Antonio Sanchez, trumpeter/vocalist Cuong Vu, and Richard Bona, who's best known as a bassist, but who functions primarily as the Group's percussionist/vocalist. The result is an exquisite album that features fresh new musical perspectives while losing none of the Group's familiar wide-ranging, melodic, always accessible sound. Most of the tracks on Speaking of Now were composed by Metheny and his longtime collaborator Mays, although three tracks were composed solely by Metheny…

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.

When this album was released in 1994, it shocked casual, and even some hardcore, Metheny fans. Recorded in one day, Zero Tolerance for Silence can best be described as semi-organized noise. In fact, it is often compared with Lou Reed's racket-fest, Metal Machine Music. The recording is five tracks of Metheny's improvised riffing on electric guitar with no other accompaniment, and few, if any, overdubs. Pat Metheny has flirted with this mind-bending musical genre many times before, including his work with Ornette Coleman and even in concert with the Pat Metheny Group.

Essential: a masterpiece of Jazz-Fusion music
"New Chautauqua" is one of Metheny's most solitary and melancholy albums. Pat Metheny is a man who loves to travel. We can say this not only because he does about a billion concerts every year, but his main themes in his music are about the road, exploring the urban world, but also more isolated places.