journal.nonesuch.com

Pat Metheny's "Tokyo Day Trip" Live EP Now Available

Today marks the release of Pat Metheny's new Tokyo Day Trip Live EP. The collection contains five tracks originally made available online as bonus tracks for Pat's recently released trio album Day Trip, with Christian McBride and Antonio Sanchez.

"There was such an outpouring of demand from listeners," Pat explains, "that we decided to compile the recordings all in one place and release them together as a set."

On the EP are the two Nonesuch Store bonus downloads, "Traveling Fast" and "Tromso," as well as three additional pieces, "Inori," "Back Arm & Blackcharge," and "The Night Becomes You," all original compositions by Pat that had never been released before. The recordings come from a recent run of performances that the trio played in Tokyo.

"One thing that has been great about this band for me," says Pat, "is the incredible range that Antonio and Christian bring to the music." He continues:

I have the feeling with them that we could do almost anything, and that freedom is inspiring, not only as a player but as a composer. These extra tracks show aspects of our trio that represent a range of other areas that we have explored over the years.

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Click here to add the Pat Metheny Trio's Tokyo Day Trip EP directly to your Shopping Cart now for only $7 and download all five MP3s at no extra charge.

All About Jazz: "Untrammeled Pleasure" of New Metheny Album Leads Back to "Solid Gold" "Song X"

On Pat Metheny's latest Nonesuch release, Day Trip, the guitarist pairs up with his touring partners bassist Christian McBride and drummer Antonio Sanchez to record pieces by Pat that All About Jazz contributer J Hunter calls "some of his best."

Hunter writes that the new record finds the trio focusing "on detail and intimacy. Sanchez is busy as all get out, bringing depth to the piece as he bubbles under Metheny's impeccable guitar and McBride's sterling foundation."

Read the review at allaboutjazz.com.

In a separate article on the site, writer Chris May takes the occasion of Day Trip's release and the "untrammeled pleasure" it has given him over the past couple months to make his way through Pat's catalog "in search of another solid gold flix."

He finds it in Song X: Twentieth Anniversary, an expanded and remixed version of Pat's 1985 recording with saxophonist Ornette Coleman, released on Nonesuch in 2005. May writes that this was the album that "revealed hitherto hidden depths in Metheny" and exuberantly calls it "the 24-carat muthalode, the ripe mango in the creme brulee" of the catalog, "for it will still scare the shivers out of you, still take you on a ride to beyond ... [I]t hasn't lost one iota of its power or beauty in the 23 years since it was recorded."

"Metheny and Coleman both are just burning," writes May. "Nothing in Metheny's previous recorded work had suggested he was capable of degrees of abandon and ferocity like this."

The writer considers the six new tracks on the 20th anniversary edition to be "astonishingly and wonderfully, as strong as the previously released tracks." In his estimation, "Song X will be working its mojo for many years yet."

To read that article on All About Jazz, click here.

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Click here to add the Pat Metheny Trio's Day Trip CD plus the free album MP3s, with two exclusive live bonus downloads, directly to your Shopping Cart now for only $16.

NY Times: Metheny Trio Brings "Brilliant" Music of "Day Trip" to Town Hall

Pat Metheny, a native son of Lee's Summit, Missouri, outside of Kansas City, will be among the inductees into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Lawrence, Kansas, this Saturday. The honor comes just two weeks after the Pat Metheny Trio held a sold-out fund-raising concert near Lee's Summit for the Metheny Music Foundation, which supports music education in area schools. For more information, visit kansascity.com.

This past Tuesday, the Trio brought its extensive US tour to a close with a sold-out show in Pat's adopted hometown of New York City. New York Times' jazz critic Nate Chinen reports that the tour closer at Town Hall covered many bases while always maintaining its focus: "Mr. Metheny's trio was playing jazz," he writes, "the genuine article."

Of Pat's performance, Chinen says:

There was marvelous concentration in his playing and an orchestral fullness to his sound ... Mr. Metheny improvised throughout with passion and erudition, combining mercurial fretboard runs with more limpid, searching phrases. And he gave his partners equal say.

Those partners, bassist Christian McBride and drummer Antonio Sanchez, shone both as individual players and as part of a cohesive team they have built over years of playing together. Chinen finds:

Each of these performances ... conveyed the message that intensity can take the form of a whisper as well as a roar ... [T]heir brilliant new studio album, Day Trip, was recorded in a single day in 2005---and their rapport has strengthened and deepened.

To read the review, visit nytimes.com.

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Click here to add the Pat Metheny Trio's Day Trip CD plus the free album MP3s, with two exclusive live bonus downloads, directly to your Shopping Cart now for only $16.

Boston Herald: Trio Brings Out Best in Metheny

The Pat Metheny Trio arrives in Pat's home base of New York City for a performance at Town Hall tonight at 8 PM. On Sunday night, they were up in Massachusetts playing the Somerville Theatre; as the Boston Herald reports, "the trio format brings out the best in guitar virtuoso Pat Metheny" with the current lineup "arguably his best yet."

Reviewing Sunday's set for the Herald, Christopher John Treacy finds that bassist Christian McBride and drummer Antonio Sanchez add "a spirit of youth and renewal" to the line-up, and "judging by the volatile chemistry the three concocted ... on Sunday, the inspiration is reciprocal."

To read the review, visit bostonherald.com.

Reporting for Bloomberg News, writer Patrick Cole concurs that "the trio has been a winning formula for Metheny, generating some of his best work." As Pat explains it in an interview with the news agency:

Playing trio is something that offers the maximum of blank, white paper with the same kind of feeling that you get with a full band. You always have lots of room to play, and that's what keeps bringing me back to it.

Cole examines how this group dynamic manifests itself on the Trio's recent Nonesuch release:

On Day Trip, Metheny's singular sound and bright melodies are front and center on every track. McBride is a double threat who can coax bluesy solos from an upright bass as if he were playing a guitar, then become virtually invisible as he blends into Sanchez's sizzling cymbals.

To read the article, visit bloomberg.com.

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Click here to add the Pat Metheny Trio's Day Trip CD plus the free album MP3s, with two exclusive live bonus downloads, directly to your Shopping Cart now for only $16.

Philadelphia Inquirer: Pat Metheny Trio "Makes Magic"

"There is nothing like the excitement that can be generated when a trio of virtuosos gets together," writes  Kevin L. Carter in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and with the Pat Metheny Trio's performance at the Keswick Theatre this past Saturday in Glenside, Pennsylvania, he reports, "the result was equivalent to the hype."

Carter reports that the Trio "makes magic" with its members' "strong musical connection," and that Pat's own virtuosic playing was on full display at the show:

From the earliest era of his career, he has combined a sweeping, dramatic arc with his searching, pastoral voice; he also adds blues, hard rock, and lots of Brazil to produce an original, substantial feel. His solo work Saturday contained all of these elements; Metheny strummed, plucked and improvised with a master plan.

To read the complete concert review, visit philly.com.

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Click here to add the Pat Metheny Trio's Day Trip CD plus the free album MP3s, with two exclusive live bonus downloads, directly to your Shopping Cart now for only $16.

Boston Phoenix: Metheny's "Day Trip" Showcases Band's Strengths

The Pat Metheny Trio, with Christian McBride on bass and Antonio Sanchez on drums, will be playing at the Peabody Auditorium in Daytona Beach tonight in the last of three Florida shows before heading up the East Coast later this week. They'll be at the Somerville Theatre in Massachusetts this Sunday, March 16, which the Boston Phoenix previews in a feature article.

In the profile, writer Jon Garelick notes that the songs on the Trio's new Nonesuch release, Day Trip, were all written, by Pat, "to play to the band's strengths." Garelick says "it might be the most 'Metheny-like' of his trio albums---favoring folk-pop lyricism even as it flies through odd meters and daunting harmonic shifts." The songs on the album are well suited to make use of "McBride's melodic gift," while Sanchez "is everywhere, 'burning' softly with his brushwork on the ballads, shifting from rock to reggae ..., playing cymbals and skins in cross-rhythms, like different voices in a chorus."

To read the article, visit thephoenix.com.

For his part, Sanchez has been listening to a broad range of music by other performers, to judge by the sampling of the nearly 8,000 songs on his iPod published in the Boston Globe. The list includes tune by the Rolling Stones, Ravi Shankar, Dewey Redman, and The Doors. For more, visit boston.com.

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Click here to add the Day Trip CD plus the free album MP3s, with two exclusive live bonus downloads, directly to your Shopping Cart now for only $16.

Metheny Trio Performs Fundraiser for Pat's Hometown; "Mines Artistically Rich Niche" on Album

The Pat Metheny Trio, with bassist Christian McBride and drummer Antonio Sanchez, has been making its way across the country, touring with music from the recent Nonesuch release Day Trip. Tomorrow night, the group will be making a very special tour stop in Unity Village, Missouri, just outside of Kansas City. Even more important, it's just a stone's throw from Lee's Summit, where Pat grew up and whose music program, in part, the Metheny Music Foundation has been established to support.

Proceeds from Friday's sold-out concert at the Union Village Activities Center will go to support the efforts of the Foundation, which hopes to provide scholarships for students from Lee's Summit, where four generations of Methenys have lived and contributed to community life. In fact, high-school music students from the town will also take the stage, as will Pat's brother, horn player Mike.

To read more about the event and the influence of Pat's hometown on the music he creates, there's a feature article in the Kansas City Sun you can find at kansascity.com. For more on the Foundation and its efforts, visit methenymusicfoundation.org.

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The Trio tour continues with stops in Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, before closing this leg of the tour with a stop at New York City's Town Hall. The Hartford Courant is already looking forward to the St. Patrick's night concert at New Haven's Shubert Theater in what writer Owen McNally says "might well be one of the year's top jazz concerts in Connecticut."

In his review of Day Trip, McNally writes that Pat is "mining an artistically rich niche with his super acoustic trio." He continues:

The trio sets high benchmarks for fluent, impeccable articulation with its heady mix of technical clarity and daring spontaneity ... [and] can also burn dramatically ... with everybody sizzling in a dialogue, or triologue, full of fresh, zesty ideas.

Of the album's title track, McNally writes:

With its swinging, lyrical guitar lines, crackling drums and rocking bass, "Day Trip," the new disc's bright title tune and final track, is a summation of the high craftsmanship that surges through the nine selections.

In the end, McNally finds the album "alive with interplay, tight ensemble cohesion and an open-ended spirit of liberty ... an irrepressible celebration guaranteed to blow away your late winter blahs."

To read the album review and concert preview, visit courant.com.

For more tour information, click here.

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Click here to add the Day Trip CD plus free album MP3s, with two exclusive live bonus downloads ("Traveling Fast" and " TromsØ"), directly to your Shopping Cart now for only $15.98.

Rolling Stone: "Metheny Thrives in a Trio Format"

Pat Metheny's latest record, Day Trip, his first trio record in years, joined here by bassist Christian McBride and drummer Antonio Sanchez, was released late last month and made available in the Nonesuch Store with the two exclusive live bonus tracks. In the latest issue of Rolling Stone, critic David Fricke gives the new record four stars. He writes that Pat "doesn't make enough records in a trio setting" and this one "should not be the last" with McBride and Sanchez. Fricke calls the pair "jazzmen with R&B and rock bones" and cites Day Trip as proof that "Metheny thrives in a trio format." Read the review at rollingstone.com.

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The Trio has been working its way down the California coast, from Napa on February 19 through San Francisco for a four-day residency at Yoshi's last week, down to The Wiltern in Los Angeles for an Oscar-night show, and closing with two shows in San Diego at Anthology tonight and Wednesday.

In the Napa Valley Register review of the town's Opera House show, staff writer Pierce Carson reports that the "all-star trio" played for "a wildly enthusiastic packed house." Carson calls McBride and Sanchez "the most awesome rhythm section in the business" and says of this trio grouping that it "might arguably be the best" Metheny has worked with. "This was an evening of pure jazz," writes Carson, "accessible yet intelligent, complex and swinging---offered by three musicians who obviously understand and like one another." You'll find the review at napavalleyregister.com.

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The Contra Costa Times, out of the Bay Area, found the opening-night show at Yoshi's in San Francisco to be "a real treat." Reviewer Jim Harrington was left in "dumbfounded amazement as Metheny plucked and strummed out a variety of sounds." Harrington lauds Metheny's partners as "certainly one of the best trios he's led." You can read the full review at contracostatimes.com.

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Variety magazine's Richard S. Ginell writes of Pat's performance at Sunday's show at LA's Wiltern Theater: "it was clear he enjoys a good joust with a pair of virtuosos." For Ginell, the set was "as eclectic as ever ... concluding with some shredding guitar-hero rock." To read the review, visit variety.com.

Reviewing the show for the Los  Angeles Times, writer Don Heckman calls it "a night to remember." He asks rhetorically whether there is "a harder-working guitarist in jazz than Pat Metheny," referencing the sheer length and variety of the set. Heckman reports that the show was "as athletic as it was imaginative, a muscular display of guitar virtuosity," with the Trio bringing "delectable variations to everything they offered." To read the review, visit calendarlive.com.

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Leading to this week's San Diego shows, the San Diego Union Tribune profiles Sanchez, calling him "one of the most distinctive drummers around---and one of the finest." To read the article, visit signonsandiego.com.

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After the last California set, the Trio makes its way to the Southwest this weekend. The Albuquerque Journal previews the group's upcoming Santa Fe set with an interview with Pat, focusing particularly on the new album's track "Is This America? (Katrina 2005)," the larger impact of the New Orleans floods, and the power of music and jazz in particular to address such important issues. To read the article, visit abqjournal.com.

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For more upcoming tour information, click here. To listen to an interview with Pat on BBC Radio 3's Jazz Line-Up from last Friday, visit bbc.co.uk/radio3; his segment begins about ten minutes into the show.

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Click here to add the Day Trip CD plus the free album MP3s, with two exclusive live bonus downloads, directly to your Shopping Cart now for only $15.98.

Pat Metheny Trio Plays Four Nights at Yoshi's

Pat Metheny makes his long-awaited return to Yoshi's celebrated jazz club in San Francisco for a four-night stint with his trio, Christian McBride on bass and Antonio Sanchez on drums. Inside Bay Area's Jim Harrington says: "Jazz fans have been waiting for this one for months ... it's the one that we all circled on our calendars back in November when the club announced its first batch of shows." The trio---the same line-up on the new album Day Trip---plays at Yoshi's tonight through Saturday, with two sets each night.

For information on the performances, visit yoshis.com. For further tour information, click here.

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Click here to add the Day Trip CD plus free album MP3s, with two exclusive live bonus downloads ("Traveling Fast" and " TromsØ"), directly to your Shopping Cart now for only $15.98.

Time Out NY Gives Punch Brothers' Debut Five Stars

When the band that would become Punch Brothers premiered Chris Thile's long-form piece The Blind Leaving the Blind in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall for last year's In Your Ear festival curated by John Adams, it brought a standing ovation from the sold-out crowd. As Time Out New York's Steve Smith writes in his five-star review of the band's Nonesuch debut, Punch, that event was further proof that Thile is a composer unlike most others.

The "exuberance and effortless virtuosity" found in Chris's earlier work with Nickel Creek, writes Smith, are on full display in his Punch Brothers band mates, who all share Thile's "fluent chops and wide-ranging interests." Smith finds in the music of The Blind Leaving the Blind, the piece at the album's core, both "the intricacy and finesse of a string quartet" and, at times, "the cinematic sweep of label mate Pat Metheny’s prog-jazz epics." And, Smith concludes, Thile's "plaintive voice and confessional lyrics cut straight to the heart."

To read the review, visit timeout.com. You can now pre-order Punch, due out on February 26, in the Nonesuch Store. You can also catch the band live on tour; click here for more information.

New Lang, Kronos Albums Now Available in the Nonesuch Store

Watershed, k.d. lang's first-ever self-produced album and her first collection of new, self-penned tunes since 2000's Invincible Summer, is now available in the Nonesuch Store. You'll find two versions of Watershed: the full-length album (pictured at left), on which k.d. puts her famous voice "to sunning new effect" (Daily News); and a special, deluxe package (pictured at right) with an additional bonus disc of live recordings and video footage. As always in the Nonesuch Store, with every CD purchase, you'll be able to download the album tracks instantly, either at the standard-sized 128 kbps or larger, audiophile-quality 320 kbps, at no additional charge.

For more on the record, visit nonesuch.com/watershed, where you can listen to three album tracks---"I Dream of Spring," "Je fais la planche," and "Sunday"---watch all six segments of the video interview series with k.d. recently posted to the Nonesuch Journal, and find information on k.d.'s upcoming tour schedule. You can find all the latest and archived Journal postings on k.d. by clicking here.

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Another new addition to the Store this week: Kronos Quartet's recording of composer Terry Riley's The Cusp of Magic, with pipa virtuoso Wu Man. Riley wrote the piece, which the Los Angeles Times says "brims with joy," for the Quartet, his longtime musical collaborators, in 2004. Included with the purchase of the CD on the Nonesuch Store, as an exclusive bonus download, is "Tusen Tankar," a traditional Scandinavian folk song arranged and performed by Kronos.

For all Kronos-related Journal entries, including information on the group's performance later this month in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall, click here. One of the pieces on the Carnegie Hall program is the world premiere of a piece by Fernando Otero, who also has a new album available in the Nonesuch Store: his "impressive" and "thoroughly original" (Newsday) Nonesuch debut, Página de Buenos Aires.

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Visit nonesuch.com/store for all the albums now available as CDs with instant MP3 downloads: Pat Metheny's Day Trip, The Magnetic Fields' Distortion, the Sweeney Todd motion picture soundtrack, and Jonny Greenwood's score to the film There Will Be Blood.

All About Jazz: Metheny's New Trio Album Is "Impeccable"

Day Trip, Pat Metheny's new record with bassist Christian McBride and drummer Antonio Sanchez, Metheny's first trio album in years, was worth the wait for All About Jazz critic Doug Collete. This "impeccable new disc," he writes, "will no doubt foster revelations in Pat Metheny Group aficionados who can rediscover his core virtues."

For Collete, Day Trip is a testament to the group's consistent touring schedule over the past few years' having "nurtured the chemistry" among Metheny, McBride, and Sanchez, who "sound eminently knowledgeable of each other" on the album.

To read the review, visit allaboutjazz.com. To purchase the album with exclusive bonus downloads, visit the Nonesuch Store.

NY Times: "Day Trip" Finds Metheny "At the Peak of His Game"

"The guitarist Pat Metheny has made some of his most engagingly forthright music in trios," writes the New York Times' jazz critic Nate Chinen. So, he continues, "it's no small thing that Day Trip ... is at least as good as any of the others."

Playing alongside bassist Christian McBride and drummer Antonio Sanchez on the just-released album, Metheny "savors the contrast between these proficient sidemen," writes Chinen. "Mr. McBride is a bedrock player, authoritative with tempos; Mr. Sanchez has a way of articulating pulse as a play of current and tide." Added to the mix is Metheny's own stellar playing, which, for Chinen, "conveys a sense of proportion, substance and coherence, along with rigorous clarity; solid benchmarks for any great improviser at the peak of his game."

With that kind of playing on the first Metheny trio record of all original compositions, the music "tenders its own rewards."

To read the review, visit nytimes.com.

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The Boston Globe lists Day Trip as essential listening, with critic Steve Greenlee saying the new album "represents Metheny at his best, creating music of understated sophistication by interacting sublimely with equally talented musicians." Greenlee sees the members of this trio as "three like-minded fellows who revel in their shared experience ... But mostly," he continues, "they remind us why Metheny remains, after more than 30 years, one of the most popular figures in jazz."

To read the complete review, visit boston.com.

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BBC Music magazine weighs in from its print edition with a five-star review, touting the album as "a
tantalising combination of astute musical focus and bracing improvisatory freedom. A triumph."

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In the Times of London, writer John Bungey wittily refers to Day Trip as "one of those Metheny albums of such virtuosity that some would-be jazz guitarists will listen and promptly opt for a simpler option—like playing the spoons, or joining Oasis." The complete review can be found at entertainment.timesonline.co.uk.

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The Financial Times gives the album four stars, with reviewer Mike Hobart writing that Day Trip

finds Metheny on top form, sailing magnificently with rhythmic precision and a sound that bites over the sparse accompaniment of Christian McBride on bass and drummer Antonio Sanchez. The trio ... play with the effortless intuition that dispels all clutter, delivering top-dollar modern mainstream jazz from tricky-themed hard swingers to acoustic ballads.

The complete review can be found at ft.com.

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In another London publication, the Telegraph, critic Martin Gayford says of the album: "This is delightful stuff." He sees it as something "hard-core jazz listeners" will appreciate, complimenting McBride for his "marvellously deep, rich bass" and calling Metheny's playing "alternately pastorally lyrical and hard-swinging." You can read the review at telegraph.co.uk.

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Back in the States, Billboard calls the record a "fine on-disc debut" for the frequent touring group, with reviewer Dan Ouellette noting how well "the seamless rhythmic mesh" of McBride and Sanchez complements Pat's "fleet-fingered float." That review can be found at billboard.com.

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Day Tip is now available in the Nonesuch Store, with two exclusive live bonus tracks available for download, at no extra charge, with every purchase of the album.

Guardian: Metheny's Four-Star "Day Trip" Features "Jubilant Improvising" from Trio

Pat Metheny's new trio record, Day Trip, is in stores tomorrow, and, in a four-star review, the Guardian's John Fordham says the album "combines the elegance of [Metheny's] lyrical fast-improvising, the eloquent pizzicato and bowed bass-playing of Christian McBride, and the explosive contemporary drumming ... Antonio Sanchez."

What's more, writes Fordham, Day Trip includes

jubilant improvising from all three, on the kind of bluesy grooves, Latin swingers and inviting ballads that suggest Wes Montgomery has returned to life and found the hippest 21st-century world-music partners he could ... Metheny's full of great improv ideas, and all three sound as if they are really enjoying themselves.

To read the review, visit arts.guardian.co.uk. To purchase Day Trip with exclusive bonus downloads, visit the Nonesuch Store starting tomorrow.

Santa Barbara Independent: Bill Frisell This Week's Show of the Week

The Santa Barbara Independent takes advantage of the start of the New Year to combine the paper's list of the best of last year with a look at the best of what's to come. There Will Be Blood is among the best films of 2007, and among the city's best live shows last year, the Independent's Josef Woodard lists both Wilco's concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl in support of Sky Blue Sky and the Pat Metheny / Brad Mehldau Quartet gig at Campbell Hall.

For this week's Show of the Week, Woodard names Bill Frisell's return to the city's Lobero Theatre, where "the always intriguing and poetic guitarist" will perform on Saturday with drummer Joey Baron. Woodard recalls Bill's 2004 performance at the Lobero as "one of the more enchanted musical encounters in the long history" of the Theatre, and says that Frisell "continues to surprise and delight," citing the guitarist's "dynamic" 2006 Nonesuch release with the "inspired" Ron Carter and Paul Motian.

To read the article, visit independent.com. For more information on Bill's show this Saturday, visit lobero.com.

NPR Music: Year's Best Include Many Nonesuch Arists

NPR's music programs and reviewers are turning in their lists for the Best of 2007, and a number of Nonesuch artists are among the top choices from public radio.

Wilco's Sky Blue Sky tops World Cafe's list of the best albums of the year. Writes the show's host, David Dye: "As the year progresses, it's remarkable when an album from earlier in the year has staying power." But for Dye, Sky Blue Sky proves that it can be done.

For the complete World Cafe list, click here.

Banning Eyre, the music reviewer for All Things Considered and the senior editor at afropop.org, has three Nonesuch artists on his list of the Top Ten of 2007: Caetano Veloso, an artist "of Dylan-esque stature," with the album Cê; the "legendary" Sérgio and Odair Assad, whose Jardim Abandonado showcases their mastery at turning music from any genre into "a thing of warmth and perfection in their hands"; and Youssou N'Dour who sings on Rokku Mi Rokka (Give and Take) with "one of the most inspiring and vital voices in pop music anywhere today."

For Eyre's Top Ten, click here.

NPR's member stations are also weighing in with their pics. On the list for "Top Ten Jazz Jewels of 2007" from WDUQ in Pittsburgh is the Metheny/Mehldau Quartet record. And Wilco's "Hate It Here," from Sky Blue Sky, is among the best songs of the year, according to Austin station KUT's music director, Jeff McCord. He calls the song "a simple tune so slyly infectious that the CDC has their eye on it ... Wilco has made one of its finest albums to date. And that’s saying a lot."

For WDUQ's list of the best in jazz, click here. For the KUT song list, click here.

You can listen to tracks from each of the albums and songs on the list by clicking on the links above or by visiting npr.org.

Metheny Music Foundation Celebrates Music in Missouri

Earlier this week, we brought you news that the Metheny Music Foundation would be holding a concert with the Pat Metheny Trio and Pat's brother, Mike, to raise funds for the Foundation's scholarship program. The Kansas City Star has more of the details on the organization's backstory and its dual goals of supporting music education in the Methenys hometown of Lee's Summit, Missouri, and honoring the family's dedication to that town.

The first goal was to establish music scholarships for area students, which it's already begun. The Foundation also aims to erect an eight-foot-tall sculpture representing the family's musical expertise (see the proposed design by Jason Bartsch at right) and, eventually, to build a museum in the town honoring the state's rich musical legacy, celebrating Missourian musicians from Charlie Parker and Scott Joplin through Chuck Berry to Sheryl Crow.

The Kansas City Star offers more information on the program for the March 7 fundraiser as well. The Star's Joe Klopus suggests that the Pat Metheny Trio may pair some tracks off their forthcoming release, Day Trip, with a performance by the Trio and Mike Metheny of "Always and Forever," which Pat has dedicated to his parents. As an extra treat, students from Lee's Summit will perform a medley of Pat's songs—arranged for marching band.

To read the Kansas City Star article, visit kansascity.com. For more on the Foundation and its fundraising concert visit methenymusicfoundation.org.

Metheny Music Foundation Holds Fundraising Concert for Jazz Scholarships

Lee's Summit, Missouri, Pat Metheny's hometown, is also the home and inspiration for the new Metheny Music Foundation, which awards scholarships for local high school students to attend the University of Missouri–Kansas City Jazz Improv Camp. On Friday, March 7, the Foundation will hold a fundraising concert at the nearby Unity Village Activities Center featuring student musicians from Lee's Summit schools along with the Pat Metheny Trio and Pat's brother, trumpeter Mike Metheny.

The Foundation also celebrates the Metheny family's long ties to the local community. "Our grandfather came to Lee's Summit in 1915," says Mike Metheny, "and was a prominent member of the community just as our parents have been over the decades. So those family roots are another important reason for this."

Tickets are on sale now. For more information, visit methenymusicfoundation.org.

Pat Metheny Trio Gives Durban Its "Gig of the Year"

Last night, Pat Metheny played the last in a string of dates in South Africa with the trio from his upcoming Nonesuch release, Day Trip—bassist Christian McBride and drummer Antonio Sanchez. Writing in the Independent (South Africa)'s entertainment guide, Tonight, Gisele Turner reports that the Sunday show in Durban was "the gig we were all itching for."

Turner writes that, even before being joined by the "two experts," McBride and Sanchez, "the world's greatest guitarist opened with three solo pieces which twinkled aspects of his kaleidoscopic range." After hearing the trio perform songs from Day Trip and others, Turner declares: "'Gig of the year' was the general pronouncement."

To read the full review from Durban, visit tonight.co.za. For more on the upcoming album, click here.

Guardian Names 1,000 Must-Hear Albums (Part 1: A-M)

With iPods now holding up to 160 gigabytes of your favorite music, it might not be such a bad idea to start thinking of the 1,000 or so albums you just can't live without. Or, as the Guardian (UK) has put it, the 1,000 albums you must hear before you die. All this week, the Guardian is revealing, day by day, the records its music team thinks are must-hears "before you shuffle off your mortal coil."

Out so far on the list, released alphabetically by artist, are groups A through M. Here's some of what the Guardian's music mavens had to say about the Nonesuch albums they included:

• Amadou & Mariam: Dimanche à Bamako (2005) "This husband-and-wife rhythm and blues pairing from Mali were already huge in France before they added even more sparkle by hiring Manu Chao as producer. A sublimely paced record of pedal-to-the-metal acceleration and relaxed, freewheeling charm."

• Laurie Anderson: Big Science (1982, r. 2007) "Her dry humour, abrasive instrumentation and technological obsessions sound as current as ever: 'So hold me Mom, in your long arms. In your petrochemical arms. Your military arms. In your electronic arms.'"

• Buena Vista Social Club: Buena Vista Social Club (World Circuit/Nonesuch; 1997) "A bunch of elderly Cubans were unlikely candidates to displace Portishead as the dinner party soundtrack du jour but, with Ry Cooder's patronage ... the power and charm of its protagonists ensured theirs was a long-told tale ..."

• Brian Eno & David Byrne: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981, r. 2006) "Underloved at the time but hugely cherished since, this album sees Byrne and Eno travel into the heart of darkness, their art-rock fuelled and flavoured by African percussion, Egyptian pop singers and samples of crabby radio DJs and a real-life exorcism. An experiment, but utterly absorbing nonetheless."

• Ali Farka Touré: Savane (World Circuit/Nonesuch; 2006) "Ali Farka Touré, who died in March 2006, was the finest and best-loved African guitarist of his generation. Often described as the godfather of the desert blues, he proved through his hypnotic instrumental work and singing that the blues must have originated from his home country of Mali ... He recorded a series of classic albums, ... but this album, released after his death, is arguably his finest. That's certainly the way he saw it ...  [On this album,] he produced some of the most compelling guitar work of his career ..."

• Ibrahim Ferrer: Buenos Hermanos (World Circuit/Nonesuch; 2003) "Backed by Ry Cooder's dream team—the jazz bassist Cachaito, the surf-rock guitarist Manuel Galbán and the Blind Boys of Alabama on backing vocals—Ferrer's effortlessly soulful voice has never sounded better: crooning the boleros, rolling his Rs on the salsas and making staggering vocal improvisations sound as casual as clearing his throat."

• Bill Frisell: Have a Little Faith (1993) "Jazz, folk, classical, pop—like a small-town electrical store, Frisell's landmark album has it all. Made with an unusual jazz quintet that includes Guy Klucevsek's accordion, it's a kind of love letter to American music, with John Hiatt's rolling title track and tunes by Copland, Ives, Foster, Rollins, Dylan and even Madonna."

• Kronos Quartet / Pat Metheny / Steve Reich: Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint (1990) "Different Trains, with its locomotive rhythms and melodies generated by the cadences of speech, is a meditation on Reich's wartime childhood and the fate of Jews in the Holocaust; it's the composer's most moving work."

• Orlando Cachaito López: Cachaito (World Circuit/Nonesuch; 2001) "Even though the Buena Vista Social Club franchise had thoroughly shaken up world music, nobody was quite ready for this sprawling, eclectic and slightly bonkers album from bassist Cachaito and producer Nick Gold, which mashes reggae, jazz, and French hip-hop with Cuba's finest."

Also on the list were Ry Cooder (Chicken Skin Music), k.d. lang (Ingénue), The Magnetic Fields (69 Love Songs), Brad Mehldau Trio (The Art of the Trio, Vol 4: Back at the Vanguard), and Pat Metheny (80/81).

For all the artists A through M, visit music.guardian.co.uk. Stay tuned for N through Z!

Metheny Mehldau Downbeat Reader's Poll Album of the Year

Out this week is the December 2007 issue of DownBeat magazine and its 72nd Annual Readers Poll, featuring the greatest names in jazz. Named the Best Jazz Album of the Year: Pat Metheny and Brad Mehldau's Metheny Mehldau. And it's only fitting, then, that readers should also name each of them the best on their respective instrument, with Metheny named Best Guitarist and Mehldau Best Acoustic Pianist.

In the issue, Pat tells DownBeat's Ken Micallef about the making of the winning record:

There was a real exchange and richness of ideas. We talked about the most complex, simple, detailed, or general idea at will. We moved around within three dimensions, sound-wise or texture-wise, harmonically or rhythmically. All my good associations have been like that.

Look for the magazine in newsstands tomorrow.

Pat Metheny Trio on a Joyful Day Trip

Leading up to tonight's performance of the Pat Metheny Trio at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, NJ, the Asbury Park Press spoke with the three musicians—Pat, drummer Antonio Sanchez, and bassist Christian McBride—about touring together and recording their upcoming album, Day Trip, out on Nonesuch in January.

McBride reports that the new record, from which they'll be playing a number of songs in the live set, covers a lot of musical ground. "It's one of the best things I've ever been involved with," he tells the paper. "It's been a mutual admiration society since we've started this, and now we'll have an album to document the experience."

And with the tour under way, he sure has been having a good time performing it: "It's such a joy to play this music," McBride says, "particularly since I'm playing with such a legend. When we play, it's always an adventure."

The joy that comes through on that adventure is intentional on the part of the group's leader: "I've always tried to make it fun for myself and the musicians I play with," Pat tells the Press. "If I do that, it's fun for the fans, too."

To experience the joy and catch the Trio live, click here for tour information.

To pre-order Day Trip and be automatically registered in the Day Trip contest, visit patmetheny.com.

Read the complete Asbury Park Press article at app.com.

Pat Metheny Trio, A Pure Experience

With the Pat Metheny Trio headed to Richmond, VA, to play at the Modlin Center this Friday, the city's Style Weekly offers a preview of what's to come. Says writer Peter McElhinney: "Pat Metheny is the opposite of a chameleon. He doesn’t blend into the settings of his numerous projects as much as he reshapes the musical landscape around him." And with all the projects the tireless guitarist has immersed himself in over the years, "today the purest way to experience Metheny’s playing is in his trio."

For McElhinney,

the stripped-down lineup provides a transparent context for his lyrical invention and demands a high level of interplay—no member of that small ensemble is ever out of the spotlight. Metheny’s had his pick of great players through the years, but since 2003 the lineup has been stable, with Christian McBride on bass and Antonio Sanchez on drums.

The trio also comes together for release of a new record, Day Trip, due out on Nonesuch in January. Everyone who pre-orders the album on patmetheny.com will be automatically entered into a special contest from the site. For more information, click here.

To read the complete McElhinney article, visit styleweekly.com.

Pat Metheny Contest for "Day Trip" Pre-Orders

Two lucky Pat Metheny fans will soon find themselves the owners of a brand-new Polk Audio iSonic home-entertainment system. To celebrate the upcoming release of Pat's new record, Day Trip, with Christian McBride on bass and drummer Antonio Sanchez, patmetheny.com announced a contest with the two Polk consoles as the grand prize and signed copies of the record for 50 runner-up winners.

Everyone who pre-orders Day Trip from the site is automatically entered to win. In addition, all pre-order customers will be sent a link for two bonus live tracks on the album's release date, January 29, 2009.

For more information, visit patmetheny.com.

Pat Metheny Behind-the-Scenes Podcasts for "Secret Story" Reissue

Pat Metheny has recorded two new podcasts to coincide with the recent two-disc reissue of his album Secret Story. The new deluxe edition includes a re-mastered version of the original 1992 album, plus a bonus disc of previously unreleased tracks recorded at the original sessions. You can listen to the podcasts here:

Episode 1: Secret Story—Deluxe Edition (12:23)
Pat discusses the process of returning to the studio to re-master the original Secret Story tapes and putting the finishing touches on the five tracks from the session only now available on the reissue.

Episode 2: Secret Story—Original Album Commentary (35:13)
Pat leads listeners through the original album, with commentary on each of the 14 tracks.

You can also access the podcasts at patmetheny.com via the Music & Media section's podcast menu.