Pat Metheny To Release New Album ‘MoonDial’

Pat Metheny To Release New Album ‘MoonDial’

Legendary American guitarist, composer, improviser and 20-time Grammy winner Pat Metheny today releases the beloved Chick Corea tune “You’re Everything,” which is the second single from Metheny’s newest album MoonDial. The album is released on BMG on July 26th ahead of two UK shows – at Symphony Hall in Birmingham on November 14th and the Barbican on November 16th as part of the London Jazz Festival.

Superficially, MoonDial is reminiscent of the guitarist’s previous recordings One Quiet Night (2003) and What’s It All About (2011), in that it is purely a solo album with no overdubs, recorded on baritone guitar. The differences start with the instrument itself, a custom-built nylon-string baritone guitar made by Linda Manzer, a close collaborator of Metheny’s and one of the world’s premier luthiers. This guitar, coupled with a new kind of nylon string made in Argentina, allowed Metheny to use a tuning system he has previously found possible only with steel strings, and his excitement about the new setup made him do something he has never done before: conceive, record, and release a new album in the middle of another tour. As he puts it: “It is a beautiful, rich and kind of infinite-feeling new world for me.”

“You’re Everything”

 
Stream the new single Here

The choice of repertoire on MoonDial is something like what Metheny recorded on One Quiet Night and What’s It All About: a combination of original tunes inspired by the new instrument and standards for which it is the perfect match. “You’re Everything” rubs shoulders with Lennon and McCartney’s “Here, There and Everywhere” and the Matt Dennis standards “Angel Eyes” and “Everything Happens to M” (combined with Bernstein’s “Somewhere). David Raskin’s “My Love and I,” written for the Burt Lancaster western Apache, and the traditional Londonderry Air are also covered. Many of Metheny’s originals were written during last fall’s Dream Box tour, as he explored the possibilities of the new setup, but he also revisited his own tune “This Belongs to You,” recorded with his Unity Band in 2012. All the material shares a vibe Metheny calls “intense contemplation,” with the instrument itself taking center stage.

The guitarist explains:
“[Last fall’s tour] represented not just the sound and vibe of the Dream Box release, but really was an opportunity for me to look at all the other ways I have released records and done occasional performances in a solo setting across the years. Each one of those solo recordings, and Dream Box as well, are unlike the others. The idea for me is to try to keep coming up with different angles and ways of thinking about music while hopefully keeping a fundamental aesthetic at work in all of it. In other words, to continue the research.”

Metheny has already produced a catalogue of 50-plus recordings that have scored 39 Grammy nominations and 20 wins in twelve different categories. Measured in terms of influence, this catalogue is in a class by itself. New Chautauqua from 1979 almost single-handedly defined an era of instrumental steel-stringed Americana that spawned legions of imitators. Zero Tolerance For Silence pushed the boundaries of modern music-making once again, and served as a companion piece to the Grammy-winning disc Secret Story. The Orchestrion Project – for which Metheny wrote the music and built a series of instruments to be controlled by his guitar, recording the results both in the studio and in a live concert – was so new in conception and execution that even a decade-plus later, it stands apart from any previous ideas of what a solo performer might achieve alone onstage.

Alongside those projects was yet another stream of development. His two back-to-back solo baritone guitar recordings, One Quiet Night and What’s It All About, were both Grammy winners and the stylistic predecessors to MoonDial. Not only do they shine as pure solo guitar recordings, but the entirely new tuning system that they introduced allowed Metheny to create an almost orchestral range, from bass to soprano, that is heard again on MoonDial.

MoonDial Track Listing

1. MoonDial (Metheny)
2. La Crosse (Metheny)
3. You’re Everything (Corea/Potter)
4. Here, There and Everywhere (Lennon/McCartney)
5. We Can’t See It, But It’s There (Metheny)
6. Falcon Love (Metheny)
7. Everything Happens To Me/Somewhere (Dennis/Adair; Bernstein/Sondheim)
8. Londonderry Air (Traditional)
9. This Belongs To You (Metheny)
10. Shōga (Metheny)
11. My Love And I (Raskin/Mercer)
12. Angel Eyes (Dennis/Brent)
13. MoonDial (epilogue) (Metheny)

It is one thing to attain popularity as a musician, but it is another to receive the kind of acclaim Metheny has garnered from critics and peers. Over the years, he has won countless polls as “Best Jazz Guitarist” and awards, including three gold records for (Still Life) Talking, Letter from Home, and Secret Story. He has also won 20 Grammy Awards spread out over a variety of different categories including Best Rock Instrumental, Best Contemporary Jazz Recording, Best Jazz Instrumental Solo, and Best Instrumental Composition, at one point winning seven consecutive Grammys for seven consecutive albums.

Pat Metheny website