Pat Metheny

The guitarist and composer Pat Metheny ranks among the most popular and innovative jazz musicians of all time. In Pat Metheny: The ECM Years, 1975-1984, Mervyn Cooke offers the first in-depth account of Metheny's early creative period, during which he recorded eleven stunningly varied albums
for the pioneering European record label ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music). This impressive body of recordings encompasses both straight-ahead jazz playing with virtuosic small ensembles and the increasingly complex textures and structures of the Pat Metheny Group, a hugely successful band also
notable for its creative exploration of advanced music technologies which were state-of-the-art at the time.

Metheny's music in all its shapes and forms broke major new ground in its refusal to subscribe to either of the stylistic poles of bebop and jazz-rock fusion which prevailed in the late 1970s. Through a series of detailed analyses based on a substantial body of new transcriptions from the
recordings, this study reveals the close interrelationship of improvisation and pre-composition which lies at the very heart of the music. Furthermore, these analyses vividly demonstrate how Metheny's music is often conditioned by a strongly linear narrative model: both its story-telling
characteristics and atmospheric suggestiveness have sometimes been compared to those of film music, a genre in which the guitarist also became active during this early period.

The melodic memorability for which Metheny's compositions and improvisations have long been world-renowned is shown to be just one important element in an unusually rich and flexible musical language that embraces influences as diverse as bebop, free jazz, rock, pop, country & western, Brazilian
music, classical music, minimalism, and the avant-garde. These elements are melded into a uniquely distinctive soundworld which, above all, directly reflects Metheny's passionate belief in the need to refashion jazz in ways which can allow it to speak powerfully to each new generation of youthful
listeners.

Pat Metheny: The ECM Years, 1977-1984 offers a vivid account of jazz guitarist Pat Metheny's first creative period, during which he recorded eleven albums for the European label ECM. This unique music reflects his passionate belief in the need to refashion jazz in ways which allow it to speak powerfully to a new generation, and the book provides a portrait of a fascinating but often overlooked period in jazz history.

"Metheny's contributions to jazz, as highlighted by Cooke, are his ambitious narrative trajectories that developed into complex forms, novel harmonic progressions (or other methods of organizing harmonic material), and use of state-of-the-art equipment and techniques. Pat Metheny: The ECM Years,
1975-1984, is a thoughtful and enjoyable study of Metheny's music and his importance to jazz." -- James Mason, Notes

"This book offers a richly textured view of Metheny's early recordings. Named as a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2018, he has attained something of the status of an elder statesman of jazz. As with, for example, Herbie Hancock's recordings during this time, Metheny's ECM output
ranged between pop-influenced music and more straight-ahead jazz contexts, with all of it reflecting a high degree of improvisational prowess and integrity. Giving the recordings the serious scholarly attention they deserve, Cooke presents the story lucidly, with a balance of technical and general
information likely to appeal to a wide readership." --Keith Waters, Music & Letters

"I've now read Cooke's account twice, always with the music to hand, and it's revelatory. Jazz studies of this quality are still rare, but quite a few of them are in the same Oxford series, which ought to be on every collectors' shelf." --Brian Morton, Jazz Journal

"The fact that Cooke only illuminates Pat Metheny's ECM years and thus captures only a quarter of the work that has since been released (44 albums) is by no means a disadvantage. Often he looks beyond the horizon, to the years 1985 and following; and draws connecting lines from there to the
investigation periodEL The result is a massive accumulation of original compositions to which he can relate to without even the slightest hint of stylistic disagreement." --JazzCity