Throughout an all but peerless career in the world of modern jazz, Pat Metheny has proven himself to be a master storyteller with a novelist’s keen eye for incisive narrative flow. That he’s managed to do so as a composer of audio landscapes sans lyrics simply underscores the depth of Metheny’s gift.
Those storytelling abilities have been readily apparent from the beginning, and have informed all of Metheny’s work, from solo projects to the myriad ensembles he’s worked with over the years. But a reasonable argument could be made that it was during Metheny’s creative partnership with keyboardist Lyle Mays, in the Pat Metheny Group, that the long-form instrumental narrative was most indelibly illustrated.
Following the dissolution of PMG, after a tour supporting 2005’s glorious The Way Up, Metheny’s creative wanderlust proceeded apace, but with the exception of his work with pianist Brad Mehldau, most of his creative output featured keyboard-less ensembles (the Unity Band, Pat Metheny Trio, et al), highly inventive variations on his Orchestrion project, a symphonic album (2020’s excellent From This Place), or thematically linked solo guitar collections. All of these forays feature outstanding work worthy of Metheny’s reputation. But the lush, cinematic, long-form and often dream-like epics of the PMG era seemed to be a part of the past.
Until the arrival of the Side Eye project, that is.
Conceived some 10 years back, Side Eye found Metheny seeking new, young blood, motivated by a desire to offer a new generation of musicians opportunities similar to the ones that came his way in his earliest days, such as the on-the-road education he received as a (very young) member of Gary Burton’s band. The first version of Side Eye was essentially an organ trio, featuring James Francies on keyboards and key-bass, alongside drummer Marcus Gilmore and Metheny. That band was a powerhouse, and they toured like demons.
When he revisited the Side Eye concept after work on other projects, Metheny envisioned a larger band of younger virtuosos, one that could take his present-day compositions into new territories, and reimagine catalog pieces in bold ways. Thus, Side Eye III + was born.
It was this ensemble – featuring keyboardist Chris Fishman, drummer Joe Dyson, bassist Jermaine Paul, and percussionist/vocalist Leonard Patton – that Metheny brought to Asbury Hall, the reimagined church in downtown Buffalo, on September 29.
Every Metheny show I’ve seen – and there have been many, going back to the 80s – has been special. This particular performance by the Side Eye III + band went beyond special, however, and ensconced itself firmly in the realm of the transcendent, from the moment “Forward March” exploded into “I’m On It,” until the last notes of “Are You Going With Me?” ceased resonating through the rafters of the church.
It was immediately apparent that this ensemble is giving Metheny exactly what he’s looking for, inspiration-wise, and his improvisations throughout the evening were uniformly magnificent, a treasure trove of call-and-response figures bathed in emotion and delivered via Metheny’s revered smooth, round, fat guitar tone. And if anyone in the audience happened to be longing for a bit of the lush, elegant, pathos-drenched sound the PMG excelled at summoning, well, they were in luck – while Side Eye II + is most definitely its own band (and both keyboardist Fishman and bassist Paul are too young to have ever experienced their bandleader’s former band in concert), this is the closest Metheny has come to conjuring the opulence of the PMG since that group ended.
The brilliance of the Asbury Hall show resulted in large part from the way that the setlist balanced the majority of the Side Eye III + album against choice pieces from Metheny’s storied past, with a pair of solo acoustic interludes (a deeply moving “America the Beautiful/The People United Will Never Be Defeated/Last Train Home” medley, and an aching “Minuano (Six Eight)/Antonia/James/September Fifteenth/This Is Not America” melange) offering exquisite dynamic shifts. Past and present commingled and challenged the notion of time as a linear concept. All of it sounded fresh, vibrant, and fully engaged in the present moment.
The whole 2-plus hour set was one long highlight, but within that body of music, a few pieces stood out, among them a profoundly moving take on “The First Circle,” a high watermark in the Metheny-Mays compositional canon; the new piece “Urban and Western,” with its brave marriage of folk, pastoral and contemporary gospel stylings; a heavenly “Mas alla (Beyond)”, featuring haunting wordless vocalization from Patton; an inspired piano-guitar duet interpretation of the PMG’s “Phase Dance”; and an exalted take on “Are You Going With Me?” to send us on our way in an elevated state.
Some concerts echo and linger in the imaginations of attendees long after the last note has faded. I’m firmly convinced this will be one of those concerts.
Originally published by WNYmedia Network.
