"One Quiet Night" with Pat Metheny

Gregory J. Robb

Columnist since 2002

Recent articles (25 total)

Published: April 19, 2003

The latest offering from contemporary jazz guitarist Pat Metheny will again put him front and center. Pat Metheny: One Quiet Night (released by Warner Jazz) will feature Metheny on baritone guitar.

One Quiet Night is the result of Metheny's solo explorations in one evening of November, 2001. The native of Lee's Summit, Missouri set up a microphone in his home studio and began to play some of his favorite songs with what Metheny describes as a "Nashville" tune.

"The combination of this wonderful new instrument—and this unusual tuning not only made some different things possible harmonically," says Metheny, "but challenged me to think about ways of playing that I wouldn't have normally thought to go."

The upcoming record will feature two of Metheny's all time favorite songs, "My Song" and "Ferry Cross the Mersey," as well as an acoustic version of "Last Train Home"—a song well known to fans of the Pat Metheny Group (PMG). Metheny wrote two new songs, "Song for the Boys" and "Over on 4th Street," and will add improvised pieces from the initial session that he recorded in New York after concluding the PMG's most recent world tour.

Metheny says One Quiet Night has a solitary quality: "This one started and ended with just a single guitar and a mic. This record is about essentially one sound, basically one mood, and taking the time to go deep inside the single world."

Pat Metheny has admitted that this recording is less than perfect, due to the nature of both the recording itself and the temperamental tuning on the guitar. Metheny claims this circumstance was really only intended to be a record of his research into the instrument built for him by Canadian luthier Linda Manzer.

"But at the same time, these recordings have offered a window into a way of thinking about music that I honestly found myself drawn to on that evening," says Metheny.

The release date for One Quiet Night has been officially changed to May 27.