With Pat Metheny, you simply never know what is coming next. But among the many things that make this ever-changing artist so special is the consistent level of commitment and quality that he brings to everything he does.
Whether purely acoustic or searingly electric, powerfully intense or deeply contemplative, highly composed or totally improvised—or even with some new-fangled contraption of his own design—there is always that unmistakable Metheny sensibility at work that has stood at the forefront of music for what is now approaching four decades.
After two consecutive yet wildly different solo recordings, (the innovative Orchestrion and last year’s Grammy-winning baritone guitar outing What’s It All About), Metheny returns with a quartet record, Unity Band.
For the first time in more than 30 years, Metheny features a tenor saxophone in the front line. The last, in fact the only, previous Metheny-led record to feature a horn player was the iconic and influential ECM recording 80/81, which brought the guitarist together with two saxophone titans, Dewey Redman and Michael Brecker. |