Pat Metheny's nearly 50-year career has always balanced the tension between two developmental poles: refining and expanding the technical and aesthetic reaches of his virtuosic yet lushly romantic "voice" on the guitar, and constructing a sprawling, ever-evolving compositional language that melds harmonic and rhythmic sophistication with approachability, steely honesty, and cinematic drama.
Road to the Sun,
Metheny's debut offering for
BMG's
Modern Music imprint, marks the guitarist/composer's first deep dive into composing classical music for the guitar.
The set consists of two long suites. The first half is devoted to the four-movement
Four Paths of Light, written for and performed by Grammy-winning classical guitar sensation
Jason Vieaux, whose recordings embrace the classical guitar canon but also expand it to include modernists such as
Astor Piazzolla,
Baden Powell, and
Ernst Mahle. (In 2005,
Vieaux released
Images of Metheny, on which he re-arranged the jazzman's compositions for solo classical guitar.) As a whole,
Four Paths of Light doesn't recall much of
Metheny's other music. The highly arpeggiated first and fourth movements criss-cross flamenco, choro, samba, and post-Romantic classical etudes without ever revealing a dominant form. The languid second movement is more sparse and spacious; it's the one section in the work pregnant with
Metheny's assonant harmonic sensibilities; in fact, at least one motif can be traced back to 1979's
New Chautauqua.
The six-movement title suite was composed for and performed by
the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, comprising
John Dearman,
William Kanengiser,
Scott Tennant, and
Matthew Greif. Their signature, too, is one of crossover. Their concerts and recordings engage everything from classical, flamenco, and swing to bluegrass flatpicking, rockabilly, and even death metal. As a whole, this work is driven by their robust chromatic and rhythmic interplay, joining the classical impressionism of
Debussy and
Ravel to
Django Reinhardt's finger-popping approach in wedding Eastern European folk music to jazz. The call-and-response element is episodic in the first movement, at once hypnotic and beguiling. It reflects the influence of canonical classical composers such as
Francisco Tarrega or
Federico Moreno Torroba, before a sprightly Brazilian schema enters (think
Cesar Guerra-Peixe's late work, or perhaps,
Moacir Santos' "Coisas") before deft flamenco rhythms and sharp-edged arpeggios suddenly appear to seamlessly morph into pastoral vignettes. Part four is constructed of interlocking guitar glissandi floating through minor and augmented key signatures before woody physical percussion and descending scraped strings introduce a feeling of disorientation and dislocation. In the fifth movement,
Metheny's hyperkinetic strumming joins the quartet's. His tone is unmistakable as he coaxes euphoric jazz -- complete with bent strings, tight arpeggios, and expanded tonalities -- to emerge from folk and pop harmonies amid fluid rhythmic contrapuntal exchanges with the quartet. The set-closer is a solo reading of
Arvo Paert's piano piece
Fur Alina, played solo by
Metheny on the 42-string, multi-neck Pikasso I guitar. Its spacious drama, tri-tone melodic structure, and elegant drones are somber and resonant.
Road to the Sun showcases
Metheny's developed musical hallmarks in compelling new and bravely wrought compositions, expertly performed by kindred spirits and modern masters. ~ Thom Jurek
