Guitar virtuosos at eye level: Pat Metheny bows

Road To The Sun

Berlin (dpa) – The world-famous US guitarist Pat Metheny has not already tried everything. From pop with David Bowie and film music to jazz of all shades to the improvised noise on the album “Zero Tolerance For Silence” (1994), hardly a playing field was safe from the virtuoso.

Some admirers might still be surprised by his new album, which adorns his name. “Road To The Sun” shows the now 66-year-old, but much younger-looking wuschelkopf primarily as a composer and fan of five Grammy-awarded musicians, to whom he bows. Because, in order to avoid the accusation of fraudulent labeling: the recording of his six-part eponymous suite was not recorded by him, but by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet (LAGQ) (for Metheny, “one of the best bands in the world”), the four-movement solo “Four Paths Of Light” by Jason Vieaux.

The album, which oscillates between flamenco, neoclassical and jazz, ends with what the 20-time Grammy winner modestly calls a “bonus track”: the delicate, minimalist piece “For Alina” by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, born in 1935. Here Metheny is alone with a fantastic sounding 42-string guitar for a good eight minutes, completely in his element as a style crossover.

“At the beginning, when I started to write, the guys from LAGQ suggested to me that they would be happy with a five- or seven-minute piece too,” says the globally successful jazz musician from the US state of Missouri about “Road To The Sun ». “Before I knew it, I was in the middle of an almost 30-minute, six-movement treatise on what would be possible in a multi-guitar format. (…) The piece literally poured out. “

Not only fans of the genre classic “Friday Night in San Francisco” (1981) by Al Di Meola / John McLaughlin / Paco de Lucia can now look forward to the result of this meeting at eye level.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210302-99-651600 / 3

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