Week 9: Pat Metheny

This week my favorite jazz artist, Pat Metheny, was playing here in Warsaw. The concert was 3 blocks from my apartment at the old Hall of Congress (Sala Kongresowa). 

It was totally awesome. When taking music history classes in under-grad and grad school, we always hear about amazing performers that would people would go crazy for, like Beatle-mania. The 2 most famous were probably Paganini and Liszt. Paganini would purposefully file down 3 of his 4 violin strings so that by playing particularly forcefully they would snap until he was left with only one good string. He would then continue to play the difficult music on only one string. Show-off!! Liszt would have little locks of his hair for sale and do all kinds of weird moves while playing the piano. The girls fawned all over him. It's interesting to read some the eye witness accounts about how people basically come out of their skin when they heard them play. The only performer that makes me feel quite like this, like coming out of my skin in amazement, is Pat Metheny. I suppose he could start selling locks of his hair, he's got plenty. He is so incredible that every time I see him (which has been several times now) I can hardly believe what I am seeing. I am always totally blown away!!! He was playing with only 2 other guys, a drummer and a bassist. But the sounds they were creating were so intense they filled the hall as much as a rock band at times. Of course Pat has all kinds of cool electronic toys and different cool guitars to make this possible. 

There is always a certain moment that he gets out the synth guitar, then you know he's about to pull out all the stops. They played this one tune, "Question and Answer" for nearly 30 minutes. Pat improvised for about 20 of those minutes. When he finally grabbed for the synth guitar, he had already been going for about 20 minutes. I was already completely blown away. Then the synth guitar took it to a whole different level. It was AMAZING!!! 

For the last 40 minutes, the trio played an extended improvisation that Pat started with his lates creation, his Orchestrion. It's basically a big one-man-band machine. He has these orchestral and new specially invented instruments that he can control with his guitar by using his foot pedals. 

This is really worth checking out, it's completely fantastic to see what can do by playing all by himself with his Orchestrion. I saw him play his Orchestrion concert in Cincinnati last year. I think it's the single most amazing concert I've ever seen in my life. It's basically like being able to improvise with an orchestra. Check out this video to see what I mean. 

During the concert, when the trio was blaring at fever pitch, I thought of the perfect ending for the orchestra piece I'm working. Once again, Pat seems to have all the answers. Anyway, as I'm sure you can tell, I'm a big fan.