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Pat Metheny’s “Road to the Sun” Review: A Vibrant Blend of Genres

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Pat Metheny’s “Road to the Sun” Review: A Vibrant Blend of Genres.

The jazz guitarist collaborates with Jason Vieaux and the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet on an album that combines jazz and classical composition.

 

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Pat Metheny has won twenty GRAMMY awards. With a creative career spanning nearly five decades, Metheny’s work defies numerous category conventions. Road To The Sun, Metheny’s most recent project and his first for BMG Modern Recordings, is being released right now. Two significant new pieces by Metheny are included on the CD, which has performances by five of the top guitarists in the world. The solo guitar suite Four Paths of Light, composed in four movements, is performed by Grammy-winning musician Jason Vieaux. The Grammy-winning Los Angeles Guitar Quartet (LAGQ), dubbed “one of the best bands in the world” by Metheny, plays the six-movement cycle.

 

I initially entered into composition to broaden my improvisational skills,” explains Metheny. “Writing and improvising are connected arts that take place at drastically different temperatures. On the other hand, regardless matter how they came to be, I hope to express the things that I enjoy as a listener and music enthusiast. These works contain elements of Metheny’s own distinct and avant-garde guitar style, not the least of which is the upbeat melodic content that has defined so much of Metheny’s output. Road To The Sun focuses on Metheny’s compositions, with his performance limited to the last track, Arvo Pärt’s Für Alina, and two tracks featuring his strumming.

 

Bottom Line: Metheny wrote the four-movement solo guitar symphony Four Points of Light specifically for Vieaux as the opening track of Road to the Sun. Four Points of Light’s “Pt. 3” is a charming piece with a lot of poignant melodies and voices. Vieaux has exquisite tone and technical capability. The B section, which features many of the well-known harmonic and melodic linkages that Metheny is known for, calms down the action. The thrilling counterpoint between the bass and melody figures propels the action forward. Another noteworthy aspect of the work is the usage of natural harmonics. Four Points of Light’s four sections each reach a coherent and inspiring compositional level where inherent musicality and technical grace harmoniously coexist.

 

The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet (LAGQ), made up of John Dearman, Scott Tennant, Matthew Greif, and William Kanengiser, performs a six-part suite in the title selection. The suite’s “Pt. 2” features an energetic melody with intertwining tremolos, tambors, counterpoint, and scales, and the LAGQ expertly carries out each accent and nuance to perfection. The composition by Metheny explores a number of contrasts, each with a subtly different style and density. The song builds to an exciting conclusion when the strumming section in the latter part of the song contrasts with the warmer inflections of the opening sections. Conversely, the exquisite melody of “Pt. 4” is surrounded by some of the most seductively veiled ostinatos.

 

Metheny concludes the project with a solo performance on his 42-string guitar, “Für Alina.” The arrangement and the colors he extracts from the instrument are stunning. All things considered, Road to the Sun is a magnificent composition that introduces modernism to the canon of classical guitar music. The artists successfully transmit the music’s inherent feeling of pulse and portray the rhythmic drive and emphases that are fundamental to Metheny’s spiritual, nonideological style. The sounds combine Metheny’s renowned musical vocabulary with combinations of jazz, world, Latin, and classical music. A welcome addition to the canon of classical guitar music is Metheny’s love of genres, his insatiable quest for musical form, and his keen sense of melody. The rhythmic elements are particularly appealing. The songs have fiercely catchy melodies,

 

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