Pat Metheny Group’s Feb. 12 Penn State Concert an Appetizer for World Tour
January 26, 2005
The Pat Metheny Group, a popular contemporary jazz band fronted by guitar superstar Pat Metheny, performs at 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 12, in Penn State’s Eisenhower Auditorium. The University Park concert is a preview of the group’s 2005 world tour, scheduled to begin Feb. 18 in Toronto. The tour, which takes Metheny and mates throughout North America and Asia, is in support of the group’s new album, The Way Up, which was released today.
Tickets for the Center for the Performing Arts presentation are on sale now at $33 for an adult; $20 for a full-time University Park student; and $26 for a person 18 and younger. For tickets and information, log on to www.cpa.psu.edu or phone 863-0255. Outside the local calling area, dial 1-800-ARTS-TIX. Tickets are also available at Eisenhower Auditorium, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays; Penn State Tickets Downtown in the lobby of State College’s Penn State Downtown Theatre Center, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday; HUB-Robeson Center Information Desk, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays; and Bryce Jordan Center, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.
In his three decades as a major player on the international jazz scene, Metheny has composed, performed and recorded a prodigious body of work for solo guitar, small combos, electric and acoustic instruments, orchestras and ballets. He has operated in settings ranging from modern jazz to rock to classical. And he has performed with artists as varied as Ornette Coleman, Herbie Hancock, Milton Nascimento, Charlie Haden and David Bowie.
Metheny has earned 16 Grammy® Awards, including the 2004 best new age album nod for his One Quiet Night solo CD and the 2003 best contemporary jazz album honor for the Pat Metheny Group’s last CD, Speaking of Now.
A native of Missouri, Metheny played trumpet from age 8 to 12, when he took up the guitar. That probably explains why his guitar-playing style utilizes the sort of flexible articulation usually associated with horn players. Blending that looseness with a sophisticated sense of rhythm and harmony, Metheny has evolved a method of playing and improvising that is thoroughly modern yet anchored in the jazz bedrock of swing and the blues.
The Pat Metheny Group got its start in 1977. From the start, Metheny and Wisconsin-born keyboardist Lyle Mays have been the heart of the group. As a songwriting team, Metheny and Mays have been likened to John Lennon/Paul McCartney and Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn.
The internationally flavored group also includes Steve Rodby, an Illinoisan who has played bass in the combo for more than 20 years, trumpeter Cuong Vu, a native of Vietnam who emigrated to the United States at age 6; Mexico City-born percussionist Antonio Sanchez, who came to the United States at 22 to study jazz at Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music; and Grégoire Maret, a harmonica wizard born in Switzerland to an American mother and a Swiss father.
Mary Ellen and Don Fisher sponsor the performance. Radio station 93.7 The Bus is the media sponsor. Artistic Viewpoints, sponsored by the Center for the Performing Arts Community Advisory Council, provides insight from an artist or expert perspective and is offered free to interested ticket holders in the Eisenhower Auditorium Conference Room one hour before the performance.
Contact: Laura Sullivan, 814-863-6379