(Guitar Book). One of the most common questions Pat is asked by students is, "What kinds of things do you do to warm up before a concert?" Over the years, in many master classes and workshops around the world, Pat has demonstrated the kind of daily workout he puts himself through. This book includes a collection of 14 guitar etudes he created to help you limber up, improve picking technique and build finger independence.
(Fake Book). 147 tunes from one of the most influential and groundbreaking jazz artists of the modern generation arranged here for all C instruments in the favored Real Book style. Titles include: April Joy * Better Days Ahead * Bright Size Life * Farmer's Trust * (Go) Get It * H & H * Have You Heard * Jaco * James * Lakes * Last Train Home * Midwestern Nights Dream * Phase Dance * Question & Answer * The Red One * So May It Secretly Begin * Sueno Con Mexico * Uniquity Road * Unity Village * Whittlin' * and more!
Pat Metheny: The ECM Years, 1977-1984 offers a vivid account of jazz guitarist Pat Metheny's first creative period, during which he recorded eleven albums for the European label ECM. This unique music reflects his passionate belief in the need to refashion jazz in ways which allow it to speak powerfully to a new generation, and the book provides a portrait of a fascinating but often overlooked period in jazz history.
The New Yorker recently referred to Pat Metheny as “possibly the most influential jazz guitarist of the past five decades.” A native of Lee’s Summit, Missouri, just southeast of Kansas City, Metheny started playing in pizza parlors at age fourteen. By the time he graduated from high school he was the first-call guitarist for Kansas City jazz clubs, private clubs, and jazz festivals. Now 66, he attributes his early success to the local musical environment he was brought up in and the players and teachers who nurtured his talent and welcomed him into the jazz community. Metheny's twenty Grammys in ten categories speak to his versatility and popularity. Despite five decades of interviews, none have conveyed in detail his stories about his teenage years. Beneath Missouri Skies also reveals important details about jazz in Kansas City during the sixties and early seventies, often overlooked in histories of Kansas City jazz. Yet this time of cultural change was characterized by an outstanding level of musicianship. Author Carolyn Glenn Brewer shows how his keen sense of ensemble had its genesis in his school band under the guidance of a beloved band director. Drawn from news accounts, archival material, interviews, and remembrances, to which the author had unique access, Beneath Missouri Skies portrays a place and time from which Metheny still draws inspiration and strength.
One of jazz’s leading critics gives us an invigorating, richly detailed portrait of the artists and events that have shaped the music of our time. Grounded in authority and brimming with style, Playing Changes is the first book to take the measure of this exhilarating moment: it is a compelling argument for the resiliency of the art form and a rejoinder to any claims about its calcification or demise. “Playing changes,” in jazz parlance, has long referred to an improviser’s resourceful path through a chord progression. Playing Changes boldly expands on the idea, highlighting a host of significant changes—ideological, technological, theoretical, and practical—that jazz musicians have learned to navigate since the turn of the century. Nate Chinen, who has chronicled this evolution firsthand throughout his journalistic career, vividly sets the backdrop, charting the origins of jazz historicism and the rise of an institutional framework for the music. He traces the influence of commercialized jazz education and reflects on the implications of a globalized jazz ecology. He unpacks the synergies between jazz and postmillennial hip-hop and R&B, illuminating an emergent rhythm signature for the music. And he shows how a new generation of shape-shifting elders, including Wayne Shorter and Henry Threadgill, have moved the aesthetic center of the music. Woven throughout the book is a vibrant cast of characters—from the saxophonists Steve Coleman and Kamasi Washington to the pianists Jason Moran and Vijay Iyer to the bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding—who have exerted an important influence on the scene. This is an adaptive new music for a complex new reality, and Playing Changes is the definitive guide.
(Jazz Piano Solos). 24 songs from this legendary guitarist and composer beautifully arranged for jazz piano solos! Includes: Always and Forever * Antonia * Are You Going with Me? * Better Days Ahead * First Circle * Have You Heard * In Her Family * (It's Just) Talk * James * Last Train Home * Letter from Home * The Longest Summer * Make Peace * A Map of the World * Mas Alla * Minuano (Six-Eight) * New Year * Phase Dance * Question & Answer * The Road to You * Sirabhorn * So May It Secretly Begin * Sometimes I See * Unity Village. Includes chord names.
An in-depth exploration of the style and influence of Pat Metheny, a truly distinctive musical voice of our time. Guitarist and composer Pat Metheny, among the most acclaimed, visionary musicians of our time, has for five decades toured with his many creative musical projects, most prominently the Pat Metheny Group, while collaborating with celebrated artists, including Charlie Haden, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Ornette Coleman, and Steve Reich. Bob Gluck, whose perspective as pianist, composer, and educator has illuminated the music of Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis in his two previous books, now focuses his lens on the music of Metheny. Neither a biography nor chronological record of Metheny’s musical output, Pat Metheny: Stories beyond Words instead captures Metheny’s self-conception as a musician and the threads that unite and distinguish his creative process. Drawing upon a wealth of new interviews and close readings of musical examples, Gluck offers a bird’s-eye view of Metheny’s musical ideas. Among these are the metaphor of storytelling, the complementarity of simplicity and complexity, and the integrated roles of composer, performer, and band leader. Much like Metheny’s signature style, this book is accessible to a wide range of readers, presenting new clarity, musical insight, and historical perspective about the legacy of Metheny’s groundbreaking music.
Music and the Creative Spirit is a book of interviews with today's innovators in Jazz, Improvisation, and the Avant Garde, including Pat Metheny, Regina Carter, Fred Anderson, John Zorn, Joshua Redman, and others.
