Pat Metheny Group Free Concert to Close 25th Montreal International Jazz Festival

Montreal, Thursday June 2, 2005 – Here’s a great surprise gift from the Montreal International Jazz Festival to its public! A very special free concert featuring the Pat Metheny Group, to close the 26th edition of the Montreal International Jazz Festival from the main General Motors stage, presented in collaboration with Radio-Canada and CBC Television. The Festival is particularly proud and eager to stage this special event, offering an exceedingly rare opportunity to enjoy an artist of this caliber on the free outdoor site. The concert will be presented Sunday July 10, 2005, starting at 9 p.m., and will subsequently be broadcast on July 24 at 8 p.m. on Radio-Canada Television and later on on CBC.

This extraordinary concert promises to leave lasting musical memories, just as another immortal outdoor concert did in 1989. Metheny’s performance that year for the masses on McGill Street captivated the entire city, a major turning point in Festival history and in the career of the superstar guitarist. His return to Montreal exceeds all hopes… and is sure to thrill fans, since several of the five special indoor concerts he’s scheduled for the Festival are already sold out!

THE PAT METHENY GROUP - THE WAY UP TOUR

Over the course of more than 25 years as a recording artist, guitarist Pat Metheny has released album after album, each one brilliantly documenting another aspect of his unique and nearly uncategorizable musical journey. Exhibiting an insatiable creative energy, Metheny has participated in just about every avenue of modern music-making that the early 21st century might offer a musician. Seemingly bent on blurring and obliterating stylistic boundaries at every opportunity, he has created an expansively impressive body of work.

But for legions of his fans worldwide, his crowning achievement may be his role as bandleader of one of the most acclaimed and influential musical ensembles of the past quarter century, the Pat Metheny Group. As the only group in history to win seven consecutive Grammy awards for seven consecutive releases, the Pat Metheny Group has occupied a nearly indefinable musical territory that is accessible to listeners of all kinds while never compromising a unique compositional and improvisational integrity that is unparalleled among contemporary and mainstream jazz groups.

Founded by Metheny in 1977, the PMG has relentlessly traveled the world playing and selling out concerts, festivals and clubs in more than 40 countries, becoming one of the most active and popular touring acts of any kind anywhere. Each new record and tour are awaited with eager anticipation and speculation; this is a band with an imagination and no-holds-barred creativity that has constantly surprised and delighted fans with the unexpected, yet always delivers on the endless promise of imagination and pure melody that was invoked from the first notes of their first record.

THE WAY UP

With The Way Up, their twelfth studio album, the Pat Metheny Group has upped the ante significantly on all fronts. The Way Up is a single 68 minute long composition by Metheny and his longtime collaborator, pianist Lyle Mays, that draws from the cumulative lessons learned throughout their nearly 30 years together as a band to deliver a record of unprecedented structural depth and boundless imagination. Says Metheny “As we have developed over the years, our interests have naturally gravitated towards longer and more detailed forms. That impulse to develop ideas fully and really follow through on what the material suggested was there even in the very earliest PMG stuff, but with the more recent albums it has become much more of a focus. During our last tour, especially with the addition of drummer Antonio Sanchez, we realized that there were no limits to how far we could take our desire to expand things not only stylistically but in terms of the actual forms we were addressing themselves. I think we have been leading towards an effort like this for quite awhile.”

This edition of the PMG may be it’s strongest lineup ever. In addition to the stellar contributions of Mays, Sanchez and longtime bassist Steve Rodby, the band showcases the talents of Cuong Vu, the Vietnamese born, American raised trumpet player whose style has been called “as revolutionary as it is beautiful” and the youthful Swiss-American harmonica giant, Gregoire Maret, who has been featured in the bands of Cassandra Wilson, Steve Coleman, Ravi Coltrane and others. Joining the group for this tour as a multi-instrumentalist is Brazilian guitarist Nando Lauria.

The Way Up is a worthy addition to the extraordinary body of work that Metheny has been building since he burst onto the international jazz scene as an innovative 19-year-old in 1974 as a member of Gary Burton's Quartet. His work as a bandleader of the highest order of one of the most successful groups in jazz history stands as one of his most important achievements. Now as a just turned 50-year-old master, he continues to represent the highest possible musical standard of excellence with each release, with each solo, and at his best, with each note. As a new millennium begins, The Way Up is an exciting document of one of the world's most important jazz musicians leading his group into freshly minted territory. The implications of this music, with its deep insight into “the tradition" in all its manifestations, combined with the timeless yet forward-thinking clarity that is watermarked into virtually all of Metheny's work to date, bode well for the safe passage of jazz as it moves into a new century.

Pat Metheny – guitar
Lyle Mays – piano
Steve Rodby – bass
Antonio Sanchez – drums
Cuong Vu – trumpet
Grégoire Maret – harmonica
Nando Lauria – guitar

Don’t miss The Pat Metheny Group – The Way Up Tour on Sunday, July 10, 2005 at 9 p.m. from the General Motors Stage on the free outdoor site at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, and July 24 at 8 p.m., on Radio-Canada Television and later on on CBC.

- 30 -

Source:
Festival International de Jazz de Montréal – (514) 523 3378

Media Information:
Myriam Achard, Media Relations Director - (514) 523 3378, ext. 535 ; [email protected]
Marie Eve Boisvert, Press Attachée - (514) 523 3378, ext. 666 ; [email protected]
Alain Des Ruisseaux, Press Attaché – (514) 523 3378, ext. 534 ; [email protected]
Sophie Desbiens, International and Travel Media Relations – (514) 523 3378, ext. 613 ; [email protected]

Public Information:
Bell Info Jazz Line – (514) 871 1881 or toll free 1 888 515 0515 ; www.montrealjazzfest.com