New Chautauqua

Pat Metheny - New Chautauqua

PAT METHENY (Electric and 12 String Guitars, Acoustic Guitar, 15 String HArp Guitar, Electric Bass)

1-New Chautauqua 5:16
1-Country Poem 2:31
3- Long-Ago Child/ Fallen Star 10:15
4-Hermitage 5:36
5-Sueno con Mexico 5:56
6-Daybreak 8:38

An ECM Production
Recorded August 1978, at Talent Studio, Oslo

Pat Metheny is one of the greatest musicians of our generation. In the '70s (and up to the present day) he busied himself re-inventing and expanding the genre of jazz in ways that were progressive and ingenious, but at the same time totally accessible to people other than musical scholars. In the middle of making some of the greatest albums ever produced with all kinds of bands, large and small, he decided to make a solo album. But this was a real solo album. He went into a studio with a collection of guitars and basses and, with the help of a multi-track recorder, composed, arranged, performed and produced every note of this album himself. Vanity project? Maybe. But not a wasted one. Not only does he show a flawless technical mastery of his instruments, but every piece is so painstakingly constructed and emotively performed that you could love it without ever noticing the technical fireworks. It predated the Windham Hill revolution, but it's still superior in every important way to anything by Michael Hedges or Will Ackerman (and this is coming from a big fan of both of those artists). Almost always forgotten when listing Pat Metheny's greatest works, it never falls from the top of my list.

For this 1979 recording, Pat Metheny tried something very different: a solo CD with extensive overdubs that put the emphasis on his acoustic guitar playing. It's in an idiom all its own, mixing the open harmonies of country music with some flamenco phrases, resulting in the melodic inventiveness of jazz with the acoustic virtuosity of John Fahey. At times, the music has the feel of a universal campfire, with phrases that can bend from Appalachian folk picking to the music of India, with gently amplified leads over acoustic rhythm and subdued electric bass. The overall effect of this consort of one may be merely soothing, but like all of Metheny's work, the details are there to keep the interest level high. –Stuart Broomer