Pat Metheny: Life and Work (Part I)
The vast and diverse body of work of Pat Metheny demonstrates an exceptional ability to create and adapt to multiple contexts in both composition and guitar performance. His pioneering spirit and experimental approach made him a visionary. Metheny’s fluid and flexible articulation is combined with rhythmic sophistication and a bold harmonic aesthetic.
Even today, Pat Metheny remains a musician who extends the sonic potential of his instruments and redefines the genre through the inclusion of new technologies. He was the first in jazz to use a guitar synthesizer as well as the Synclavier, placing him at the forefront of electronic music. He also developed other types of instruments, such as the soprano guitar and the “Pikasso” (a 42-string guitar), among several other Ibanez PM-100 signature models.
His versatility led him to perform with musicians from all musical backgrounds – both inside and outside jazz – and to present his music in the most varied performance settings: solo, duo, trio, quartet, small and large ensembles, ranging from jazz to rock, Latin or even classical music. This diversity enabled him to absorb a wide array of musical sonorities reflected in his compositions, blending elements from all these influences.
Bright Size Life
In 1975 he released his debut album, Bright Size Life, featuring electric bass prodigy Jaco Pastorius and drummer Bob Moses, presenting a new conception of the jazz guitar trio.
The cyclic compositions on this record move away from the traditional jazz structures of “AABA” or “AAB” and are largely devoid of the customary “II–V–I” progressions. The harmonic rhythm does not follow the confinement of eight-bar phrases, and “AB” structures appear with irregular shapes or even as “ABCDE”. Pieces written in 4/4 include interspersed bars of 3/4 (and vice versa), and it becomes common to find “vamps” or solo sections with free form.
Metheny went even further by exploring an embryonic form of progressive jazz, including several contrasting sections within the same composition that repeat cyclically, creating both space and structure for improvisation. In Bright Size Life there is a clear search for less conventional jazz sonorities: few dominant chords, frequent use of triads, slash chords, open voicings, harmonic scales, wide intervallic leaps, and expressive use of slides and bends as articulation devices.
Thus were laid the foundations for Metheny’s concept of fusion between jazz, country (also known as “Americana”), and folk music, as well as for his use of 12-string guitars and alternative tunings.
Pat Metheny Group
The fusion of styles in Metheny’s work did not stop at country and folk. His subsequent albums reveal strong influences of Brazilian music (e.g. the track Lone Jack), while also hinting at the embryo of what would become the Pat Metheny Group. The albums Watercolours (1977) and White Album (1978) mark the beginning of his partnership with pianist and composer Lyle Mays. Mays co-composed many of the PMG’s themes and contributed his distinctive textures and atmospheres, helping to define the band’s signature sound.
The rock influences present in White Album are also felt in American Garage (1979), where the idioms of that style are explored under the influence of Jaco Pastorius and Weather Report.
This variety of colours was largely a result of technological experimentation. Metheny was one of the first to explore natural chorus (by using two slightly detuned amplifiers) and digital delay. In pieces such as Phase Dance and Sueño Con Mexico he introduced Nashville tuning, and often mixed different types of guitars, sometimes within the same track, to explore timbral variety and contrasting textures. In 1979, he made history by introducing the Synclavier and the guitar synthesizer into the jazz scene with his Roland GR-300 (as heard in Are You Going With Me and Song For Bilbao).
Metheny has referred to Are You Going With Me as one of his favourite pieces to perform. It is built on a gradual build-up of tension over two chords sharing the same tonal function (tonic). This slow, breathing sense of stasis – propelled forward by the soloist and by the interwoven voices and textures – serves as the foundation for melodic ideas developed through tension and release, in dialogue among the various timbres explored. This musical approach would later be expanded in album-suites such as Imaginary Day (1996) and This Way Up (2005).
Film Music, Pop and Free Jazz
Metheny’s stylistic versatility had already led him, in 1985, to compose the film score for The Falcon and the Snowman (starring Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn), which included the pop single This Is Not America, featuring lyrics and vocals by David Bowie.
Later, in 1996, Metheny returned to film music with the Italian film Passaggio Per Il Paradiso, telling the story of cinema legend Julie Harris. In addition to composing, Pat recorded all the instruments himself.
A year after his first foray into film composition and pop, Metheny joined Ornette Coleman to record one of the most unconventional albums of his career, Song X. This excursion into free jazz featured Charlie Haden, Jack DeJohnette and Denardo Coleman, and marked him as a truly multifaceted and genre-transcending artist.
The variety of musical genres and performance contexts was accompanied by a vast palette of timbres. The decade in which Metheny played pop, free jazz, and film music was also the one where he devoted himself to classical and nylon-string guitars. In collaboration with luthier Linda Manzer, he developed the soprano guitar (tuned an octave higher, as heard in Letter From Home), the sitar-guitar (Tears of Rain and Last Train Home), and the astonishing “Pikasso” guitar (Into the Dream), a 42-string instrument spanning almost the full range of the piano.
The Music
In 1987, the Pat Metheny Group released its most successful work, Still Life (Talking), which won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Album. The record consolidated the influence of Brazilian music on PMG’s sound while introducing unparalleled complexity in voicings, timbre, and instrumentation.
The opening track, Minuano (Six-Eight), brings mysterious, flowing and breathing sonorities, shaped by the nylon-string guitar, keyboards, synthesizers and percussion, interwoven with vocal melodies that explore dynamics, depth and tonal range. The impression is one of continuous movement and melodic evolution, enriched by a panorama of rhythmic and contrasting textures that add body and volume. Here, concepts of jazz fusion, Brazilian music, progressive jazz, and even what would later be known as “world music” merge into one. The composition’s length and sectional diversity – “ABCDEFGH” – are remarkable, particularly the use of the marimba in Section “E” and the triumphant final resolution uniting all the voices in a powerful conclusion.
In Last Train Home – arguably PMG’s most acclaimed and recognisable piece – Metheny introduced, for the first time in music history, the electric sitar sound as the main voice of a composition. Through sound, the composer creates vivid visual imagery, allowing us to sense the nostalgic movement of a train returning home.
This may be one of the most defining aspects of Metheny’s music: the sensation of constant movement, of travelling toward something new, of discovery, absorption of different cultures, contexts and images inspired by life itself – the stage, the road, the journeys, and the memories. Even his album covers reflect this idea: photographs of roads, landscapes, or clusters of seemingly random moments compressed together, creating a new reality born from fragments of lived experience. The very album titles echo this journey: Travels, Still Life (Talking), Secret Story, The Road to You, I Can See Your House From Here, We Live Here, Beyond the Missouri Sky, Imaginary Day, and A Map of the World.
This idea of returning home, intertwined with the longing for it, is also found in the title track of the next PMG release – another Grammy winner – Letter From Home, performed on his soprano guitar.
The Trio and the Standards
In 1990, Metheny returned to the trio format, this time with Dave Holland and Roy Haynes, on yet another Grammy-winning album, Question and Answer. In this more intimate and tradition-rooted setting, he blends jazz standards with original compositions, all recorded in a single studio day.
Metheny’s approach to standards reveals a highly personal language: virtuosic phrasing subdivided into semiquavers, always retaining the characteristic bebop swing feel. His polyrhythmic lines, rich in chromaticism, often move downward, suggesting two simultaneous melodic registers within a single line. A highlight is Old Folks, where Holland and Haynes provide a flexible accompaniment that avoids the conventional walking bass or overt swing, allowing Metheny to deliver an inspired solo with single lines, self-accompaniment, rhythm and melody, all imbued with remarkable intent and emotion.
Metheny’s ability to interpret standards and original pieces with the same coherence reveals his deeply individual identity. The result is an unusual homogeneity, bridging tradition and modernity in a subtle and masterful way. At this stage, the only question that remains about this musician and his music is simple: are there any limits to such inspiration, innovation and surprise?
Inspiration
In 1992, Metheny entered the studio under his own name, accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra, to record what is probably his most personal and emotional work. Secret Story (Grammy winner) reveals a vast musical landscape that opens unexpectedly with a Cambodian children’s choir and unfolds into dreamlike narratives and soundscapes that draw the listener inward.
Metheny himself considers some of the pieces in this album among the most important and personal of his life. Many of them were written during a period he spent living in Brazil, where he also composed several works for ballet.
About the composition The Truth Will Always Be, Metheny has said he feels a strong connection to personal issues close to his heart. The harmonic simplicity of the piece, combined with its striking sonorities, rich timbral palette and the driving, march-like rhythm of the drums, envelops and transports the listener, preparing the way for a soaring solo executed in a style later described as “flying seagulls”. The development of this solo highlights a particular musical trait that distinguishes Metheny from all others – his ability to convey emotion and share musical imagery. Indeed, searching for a specific motif, phrase, or intervallic pattern in his solos is often futile: his expression transcends purely musical parameters, unbound by conventional jazz frameworks.
In Metheny’s work, we do not find mechanical repetition of melodic or rhythmic motifs, extended chordal devices, or deliberate “outside” playing. Not because they are absent, but because his phrasing is not a strictly mental process. As he himself puts it, we all have the ability to “improvise” our phrases when speaking to others without consciously thinking about verbs, adjectives, or pronouns. A good improviser – one who has studied harmony for years – simply “plays”.
In his own words:
“Swing is everything that happens – and the way it happens – in between the notes.”
In 1993, the PMG returned with The Road to You, followed by We Live Here in 1995, earning the group its seventh consecutive Grammy – an unprecedented achievement in any musical genre.
Will there be more, Mr. Metheny? Even more?
Yes… much more.
Bibliography
Pat Metheny: Pat Metheny Song Book (Hal Leonard Corporation)
New Grove Dictionary