Grammy-Winning Guitarist Pat Metheny Says Trio's Good Company

By Patrick Cole

March 18 (Bloomberg) -- After seven straight Grammy Awards, jazz guitarist Pat Metheny is putting his six-man ensemble on ice and returning, for now, to the cozy trio format where he started more than 30 years ago, when the wild-maned wunderkind first burst onto the music scene.

His early verdict on the switch: three's good company.

``Playing trio is something that offers the maximum of blank, white paper with the same kind of feeling that you get with a full band,'' said the tanned Metheny, now 54 and still sporting his signature do, during a recent interview at Bloomberg's New York offices. ``You always have lots of room to play, and that's what keeps bringing me back to it.''

Metheny's threesome will be appearing at Manhattan's Town Hall tonight. In January, the trio released ``Day Trip'' (Nonesuch), featuring Christian McBride on bass and Antonio Sanchez, a veteran of the bigger Pat Metheny Group, on drums.

The 10 original compositions by Metheny were recorded last year in New York. After a three-month break, the trio starts a European tour in Darmstadt, Germany, on June 30.

From the beginning, the trio has been a winning formula for Metheny, generating some of his best work. He launched his recording career to wide critical acclaim in 1975 with ``Bright Size Life'' (ECM). There at the inception were bassist Jaco Pastorius and drummer Bob Moses.

A 1990 trio recording, ``Question and Answer,'' with bassist Dave Holland and drummer Roy Haynes, won a Grammy for the track, ``Change of Heart.''

7 Straight Grammies

But it was the Pat Metheny Group that secured his place in the jazz pantheon over three decades of touring and recording.

Mixing electric jazz with synthesizer patches and exotic vocals, the group won an unprecedented seven consecutive Grammy Awards -- one for each of its last seven albums. Over his career, Metheny has lugged home 17 Grammies in all.

He's done more than 30 albums as a bandleader or solo artist, with worldwide sales totaling about 12 million copies, according to Metheny's management company, Ted Kurland & Associates. It's an extraordinary record of commercial success when many jazz artists struggle to sell more than 20,000 albums per release.

For all that, though, the burden of managing five or six musicians, plus crews, and taking them on the road for extended tours began to weigh on Metheny.

Bright Melodies

``The trio has provided me a platform for exploring certain things compositionally that really focus on the guitar and what the guitar can be in jazz,'' he said.

On ``Day Trip,'' Metheny's singular sound and bright melodies are front and center on every track. McBride is a double threat who can coax bluesy solos from an upright bass as if he were playing a guitar, then become virtually invisible as he blends into Sanchez's sizzling cymbals.

Metheny comes from a family of musicians. He said he knew he wanted to be a jazz player ``30 seconds'' after his brother Mike put a :S:d1" onmouseover="return escape( popwSearchNews( this ))">Miles Davis record on the turntable when they were children growing up in Lee's Summit, Missouri, a Kansas City suburb.

After that, music became an all-consuming way of life, he said, recalling 15-hour days spent composing and practicing that left time for little else.

Till now.

Boy Wonder

No longer the boy wonder, Metheny lives in Manhattan with his wife and two children. Afternoons, when he's not traveling with the band, he puts the music aside so he can pick up his son from school.

His domestic responsibilities also supply a motive to open the mail more regularly.

``Now I keep track of the royalty checks a little better,'' he said. ``I've got to pay for school and food and stuff.''

(:S:d1" onmouseover="return escape( popwSearchNews( this ))">Pat Metheny appears with his trio at Town Hall, 123 W. 43rd St., New York. Information: +1-212-997-1003.)

To contact the reporter on this story: :S:d1" onmouseover="return escape( popwSearchNews( this ))">Patrick Cole in New York at pcole3@Bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 18, 2008 00:01 EDT