Jazz legend: Pat Metheny, a thousand guitars under the moon

Jazz is most often learned in teams, historically at the desk of big bands or within various groups where it is first a matter of following before leading. But perhaps we should also consider that the greatest, at one moment or another, at the moment of a sort of flight, of a solitude chosen in the apotheosis of a musician’s life, ingenious in unburdening yourself, in making things simple, that is to say the most difficult. Some famous pianists, from Sonny Rollins to Lee Konitz, all the lords of the piano have attempted the high aerobatics of the solo.

It’s rarer, even extremely rare, among great jazz guitarists. A side here or there, moments suspended between two rhythmic clouds for Django or Jim Hall. And there is hardly anyone in the history of jazz other than the incomparable Joe Pass for having pushed the idea of ​​the solo concert to its limits, during the seventies. When this was pointed out to him, Pat Metheny agreed: “Joe Pass was in a class apart. He really found a way of soloing that was new to the instrument. But in reality, it came from his broader conception as a musician, especially regarding his exceptional perception of time. This is the key element for any musician in this field. But in terms of acting, he was unreal. There are a few others I love, including Ted Greene.”

Metheny therefore tries in turn, passing through Geneva this October 28, the exercise of the solo tour. At 70 years old, the man has retained this air of an eternal smiling adolescent, now mixed with happy wisdom. Long hair, always pop style, has certainly gone gray. The checked shirt, or the t-shirt, country style, or americana: his native land of Missouri is still there. But above all, it retains a completely jazz musicality, which has perhaps never been as limpid and moving as with the recent album “MoonDial”, “lunar dial” released solo, sublime baritone and nocturnal guitar intended “for insomniacs “, he said. Even if other experiences had prepared this ground, this is his third truly alone album with six strings, after “One Quiet Night”, in 2003, then “What’s It All About”, in 2011: all this makes today corpus.

Exceptional concerts

However, he had never done a series of concerts like this before: just a guy and his guitars. “I just felt like it was the right thing to do at this time,” he explains. “While this tour is sort of built around these recent albums, I’m using it as a platform to review all the other ways I’ve looked at things ‘solo’. There’s a whole series of things that have happened over the years in this area, including early pieces americana, as on the album “New Chautauqua” in 1979, but also on “Orchestrion”, fourteen years ago. In my eyes, these different things are part of one and the same story, one and the same record. This presentation is unique to me, there is a lot of variety throughout the evening. I had a lot of fun doing it and I feel like I really grew this year thanks to what this setting requires.”

There remains in Metheny a wonder that is the brother of his infinite curiosity. Here is perhaps the most celebrated active jazz musician on this Earth: 20 Grammy Awards, over thirty years, on the clock. Awards for “jazz fusion”, “contemporary jazz”, “instrumental Music”, “instrumental rock” and even “New Age music”. An eclectic gift born in the Midwest in 1954, into a very musical family. Almost a child prodigy, Metheny: he was 20 years old and had not released his first album when this virtuoso guitarist became the youngest professor in history teaching at Berklee College of Music, in Boston, one of the most important schools in the world.

Very quickly, within his Pat Metheny Group, he gave free rein to a style built on a thousand influences. Jazz and sounds of Brazil, rock and contemporary music, folk, country and classical music. From David Bowie (“This is Not America”) to Ornette Coleman, Metheny hangs out with everyone and everything.

But his desire to solo was also built on his link with Linda Manzer, a famous luthier to whom he owes around twenty exceptional guitars, including the Pikasso, a bizarre cubist affair (4 necks, 42 strings).

Baritone guitar

It is a new baritone guitar, still created by Manzer, which served as the basis for “MoonDial”: “The problem with baritone guitars is that they don’t really have any use outside of the pleasure of playing. to sit on the couch and hear this deeper sound and things coming back to you in different tones than you’re used to,” Metheny says.

These guitars are often tuned differently: some of the basses are replaced by thinner strings, tuned an octave higher: this is the so-called “Nashville” tuning, sometimes “half-Nashville” if it is only applied to two ropes. “Linda Manzer is well known as one of my most important musical collaborators. And so some time ago, I asked Linda to make me a nylon-stringed baritone; It’s a magnificent instrument.” Problem: with Nashvillian tuning, the tension on the nylon strings is such that they sometimes break, or sound out of tune. Metheny finally found ad hoc ropes in Argentina that held up. Result: a warm, enormous, enveloping, incredible sound, which is that of “MoonDial”.

The result resembles a fabulous campfire jazz, where each listener feels like they are in the middle of a night of mysteries, somewhere under the stars, in the hills, the desert or in the forest: close your eyes and dream as you do want. Sometimes a standard comes on, or something from the Beatles, a melody from Paul Simon. Metheny makes music of landscape beauty, to the bone because the most natural, airy, liberated there is in the world. It takes the life of a musician of genius to achieve such transparency: to make the night this dazzling, and to transform six strings into a thousand guitars under the moon. Pat Metheny delights.

Bio express

1954 Born in Lee’s Summit, Missouri.

1976 First album on the ECM label, with bassist Jaco Pastorius.

1978 Launch of the Pat Metheny Group, which will serve as the basis for his music.

1983 Wins his first Grammy Award, for the album “Offramp”. Nineteen will follow.

1998 “Beyond the Missouri Sky,” a duet with double bassist Charlie Haden.

2024 “MoonDial” released.

Christophe Passerborn in Fribourg, has worked at Le Matin Dimanche since 2014, after having worked in particular at Le Nouveau Quotidien and L’Illustré. More info

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