Pat Metheny (guitar, guitar synthesizer), Lyle Mays (keyboards), Steve Rodby (bass), Antonio Sanchez (drums)
 
Pat Metheny is considered to be one of the leading guitar players of the last three decades. He has won 17 Grammy awards and with his Metheny Group, he has collected seven. In his larger ensembles Pat Metheny creates broad frescoes and jazz which is easier to digest with friendly colors. This line up, a fixed quartet, in contrast, plays the pure Metheny sound.

Metheny, with his big mop of hair immediately catches the eye. His outfit is usually the same: a striped shirt, jeans and sneakers. But the man belongs to the top line of jazz musicians and he has been dominating the jazz scene since his breakthrough 1976 album, Bright Size Life.

Hailing from the heart of the United States, Kansas City, Missouri, Pat Metheny began playing the trumpet but switched to the guitar when he was twelve. By the age of fifteen he was playing with the jazzmen in Kansas City. From’74 onwards, he performed with Gary Burton for a few years and developed a personal style which became his trademark. He has a tremendous rhythmic and harmonic feel which is combined with a very loose and flexible way of playing. The Metheny way of improvising is deeply rooted in jazz music, swing and blues. He is indebted to musicians like Jim Hall and Jimmy Raney but he always kept away from the classic jazz guitar.

On the album Bright Size Life he renewed the sound of the traditional jazz guitar for a whole new generation of guitar players. He brought back ballads and wrote catchy romantic songs with beautiful harmonies. His fluent and open sound with clear notes, different from a dry jazz guitar sound, became very influential.

Metheny considers jazz as a type of folk music but almost in a scientific way. He has always been interested in the latest technology and continually works on the sound and tone of his instruments. This year he toured with his Orchestrion where he plays solo with a battery of instruments which are driven by the technique of solenoid buttons and pneumatic power.

Over the years Metheny has played with various musicians ranging from Steve Reich and Ornette Coleman to Herbie Hancock and Jim Hall but also people like Milton Nascimento and David Bowie. His oeuvre contains compositions for solo guitar and smaller and larger ensembles. Pat Metheny remains one of the hardest working musicians. Since those early days in 1974 he has spent most of his life touring the world.