Few musicians manage to be relentlessly creative and enormously popular at the same time, but Pat Metheny has threaded that needle for nearly five decades.
After a short apprenticeship as a student and sideman of Gary Burton, the guitarist was signed to the iconic record label ECM in the ’70s. His debut album as a leader, “Bright Size Life,” was recorded in 1975 with the virtuosic bassist Jaco Pastorius and the dynamic drummer Bob Moses and was released in 1975 to much critical acclaim and commercial success.
Metheny, who plays a Boscov’s Berks Jazz Fest concert on Saturday at 6 p.m. at the Scottish Rite Cathedral, would go on to one of the most prolific careers in modern jazz, releasing more than four dozen albums as a leader, earning 20 Grammy awards and headlining at festivals and venues across the globe.
Throughout that career, in addition to leading various ensembles, Metheny has also recorded and performed as a solo guitarist, going way back to 1979 with New Chautauqua on ECM, a recording that reflected his roots in the Midwest plains. His latest album, “Dream Box,” is, as he describes it, “an unusual recording for me; a compilation of solo tracks recorded across a few years that I discovered while listening on tour.”
Metheny sees each solo album as different from his others, perhaps most dramatically in the case of the pastoral “New Chautauqua” compared to the electric noise of “Zero Tolerance for Silence.”
“But even looking at ‘One Quiet Night’ compared to ‘What’s It All About,’ although both are pure solo baritone guitar records, ‘What’s It All About’ was the first time I had ever done an entire record playing only other people’s compositions with none of my own and with a particular focus on an earlier era and so forth,” he said. “The idea is to continue the research.”
Metheny feels that “Dream Box” stands apart from the others for a few reasons.
“It is all about a particular kind of touch on the electric guitar that has been a pretty major issue for me across the years,” he said. “And the idea of doing a record like that probably would not have crossed my mind had I not discovered a folder of examples of me playing that way that I had forgotten about.”
It was during an extensive touring period that made up most of 2022 for him that he found that forgotten folder on his computer.
“I often make quick recordings of things: a new tune, a new (or old) guitar, a standard tune or just to try something out,” he said. “I have a spot in my laptop where I stash these things, truthfully, usually never to be heard again.
“Usually, the only time I get to listen to my own stuff is while on the road. I often say I live on output, with little or no time for input. That changes on tour, where suddenly there seem to be more free hours in the day, albeit on a bus or in some far-flung hotel room. Occasionally, those moments offer a chance to rummage around in the files to see if anything interesting may lie there.
“This past year was a particularly busy travel year for me, with about 160 performances worldwide. In the course of all that travel, I found myself returning to that discovered folder lots of times, genuinely surprised at what I was finding in there. From those listening sessions, I gradually sifted through everything to find this program emerging as a coherent whole. I found that I had unintentionally gotten to a destination I had not planned for, and I am excited to share what was buried in there.”
The focus is indeed on electric guitar, albeit a quiet electric guitar, one that in some ways mirrors the sound and feel of an acoustic guitar.
“A goal has always been to have a touch on the electric that might get me as close to the kind of phrase-by-phrase dynamics that can occur naturally with an acoustic instrument,” said Metheny. “In fact, using an electric in this way is quite a bit harder than what occurs naturally with an acoustic. There is one more step between the touch of the player and the listener that has to be accounted for.”
Of course, the compositions feature a strong reliance on melody. After all, Pat Metheny may be the most melodic jazz musician alive today, which is likely one of the reasons his compositions have been covered by so many other artists, including Kurt Elling, Roy Haynes and John Pizzarelli (who did an entire album of Metheny tunes called “Better Days Ahead”).
“That is incredibly gratifying to me, of course, and just an amazing compliment that people would take the time to work them up,” Metheny said. “One thing I do hear a lot from players is something to the effect of the tunes being ‘a lot harder than they sound,’ which I get a kick out of, I have to admit. I have watched a lot of expert bebop guys crash and burn on the bridge to ‘James,’ which kind of cracks me up.
“Also, as much as the community in general has become so fluent as improvisors over Tin Pan Alley-type harmonies and even very modern harmony, playing on simple triads (which comes up often in some of my tunes) remains a kind of final frontier in a weird backwards kind of way.”
Although we may think of melody as shorthand for simplicity, Metheny has a different perspective.
“For all the aspects of music that can be quantified, studied, measured, broken into pedagogical courses for college credit and so forth, melody is somehow resistant to it all,” he says. “While it is kind of easy to talk about something being ‘melodic,’ the differences between the kinds of melodies that stick to your heart and soul and those that go in one ear and out the other are kind of immune to what someone might be able to notate on a page and then come up with tangible reasons as to what makes this one work and that one not.
“For me, to a certain degree, what is successfully melodic has to do as much with what happens in between the notes as to the way they land — it is about how it all adds up. From a compositional standpoint, I can’t say that it is ever something I can ever guarantee I will get to, or even try for. I think my main goal is to do my best to let the ideas that seem to be floating around have a chance to be whatever it is they seem to want to be. Sometimes I am surprised myself at what seems to stick to use the term I mentioned before.”
Although Metheny has thrived as a soloist, he also has worked with many of the greatest jazz musicians of his time. The list of drummers alone with whom he’s recorded reads like a who’s who of modern jazz: Jack DeJohnette, Roy Haynes, Tony Williams, Billy Higgins, Brian Blade and Antonio Sanchez.
In recent years, his Side-Eye project has enabled him to play with a new generation of younger players, including keyboardists James Francies and Chris Fishman, as well as drummer Joe Dyson.
“I love great musicians, and as a fan I stay up on the young guys and look for who is playing well,” he said. “The Side-Eye thing is a chance for me to investigate that crew further, and Joe Dyson in particular is someone who I feel really grateful to have shared the bandstand with a lot over these past few years. He is the real deal.”
When asked about his own evolution over the years, from a teenager to a 60-something, Metheny points to the growth in his musicianship.
“Even though I was given an incredible head start by the opportunities I had playing in Kansas City at 14 or 15 years old, for most of those early records I had still been at it for less than 10 years,” he said. “Now it is like 50-plus years. I am a way, way better musician now than I was then, and as one would hope, I play the instrument a lot better too.
“In no way would I want to take away from the early stuff either. I am happy to say that there are no arguments I was making then that I wouldn’t make today, and I can, and sometimes do even address many of them. This tour has been a great opportunity to revisit some of those ideas, updated and all in one place.”
Metheny says that the title of “Dream Box” has a few meanings.
“Box is musician slang for a hollow-body guitar,” he said. “There are some super-cool dream boxes represented on this recording, including the prototype of a new instrument I have been working with Ibanez on that reflects my interest in pre-war Charlie Christian style pick-ups.
“But dreams in their broadest sense make up the vibe with this set. Music exists for me in an elusive state, often at its best when discovered apart from any particular intention. I hope folks might find some dreams of their own in this music.”
Those dreams will be on full display during Metheny’s solo performance Saturday at the Scottish Rite Cathedral.
If you go
Event: Boscov’s Berks Jazz Fest presents Pat Metheny
When: 6 p.m. Saturday
Where: Scottish Rite Cathedral, 310 S. Seventh Ave., West Reading
Tickets: $59 to $79
