(August 2023 – Press Release) — After a globe-trotting 33-stop tour this past spring and summer with his Side-Eye band, legendary American guitarist, composer and improviser Pat Metheny takes to the road again, this time as a solo act, beginning on September 13 in Homer, NY.
With currently scheduled coast-to-coast performances in 51 venues across 29 states and more to be added in March and April 2024, by the end of the Dream Box tour in 2024 Metheny will have given at least 76 performances of the program in the United States. The tour gives him the chance to explore his approach to being a solo performer in both traditional and unorthodox ways in the kinds of intimate venues that will offer audiences an absolutely unique concert experience:
“I’m really looking forward to doing this pretty significant tour that will just be me. I’m going to draw on all my solo records, from New Chautauqua on, and I’ve written a lot of that kind of material: narrative, storytelling, with expositional-type improvising. I did a test run of solo concerts a couple years ago and I really, really enjoyed it. It’s going to be something quite different for me, that intimate relationship. I think I’ll probably actually talk some on the gig, which I generally don’t like to do, but it sort of fits with what this evening will be.”
Pat Metheny
Metheny has produced a catalog of recordings that, measured in terms of influence, is in a class by itself: 50 recordings that have won 20 Grammys in twelve different categories. New Chautauqua (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 still stands apart from any previous ideas of what a solo performer might achieve alone onstage.
Alongside those projects was yet another stream of development: two back-to-back, Grammy-winning solo baritone guitar recordings: One Quiet Night and What’s It All About, the predecessors to Dream Box. Not only do they shine as pure solo guitar recordings, but they also introduced an entirely new tuning system that allowed Metheny to create an almost orchestral range, from bass to soprano, within the realm of a simple steel six-string guitar.
You can check out the Jazz Guitar Life Review of Metheny’s Dream Box by clicking here.
Pat Metheny: Tour Dates can be seen here!
Press release courtesy of Glenn Petry, 21C Media Group.
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