More than 40 years with Pat Metheny

I was studying composition with Hank Levy at Towson University, between 1987 and 1989, when he introduced me to Pat Metheny’s music. Hank played me a recording of the North Texas State University big band, the One O’Clock Lab Band, playing its arrangement of Pat’s epic “First Circle” (the original is on the 1984 album First Circle). I was blown away by the music, and just as much by Hank’s reaction as we listened to it together.

My first big-band composition under Hank’s tutelage was “Guess Who?” (1988), listed on my Compositions page. The title owns up to how much it borrowed from Hank’s own chart “Peek Into a New Time Zone,” all in 7/4 and 14/8.

What made me a mega fan was Pat’s use of exotic rhythms and time signatures. That became the subject of my doctoral dissertation at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, The Exotic Rhythms of Don Ellis (2002), which I dedicated to Hank.

“The epic ‘First Circle’ … begins with hand claps in 22/8. This is the song that brought me into the Metheny circle back in the late 80’s.”

On the night of April 14, 1994, I sent a CompuServe message to an account listed as “PAT B METHENY,” asking whether it really was Pat. I was working toward a Doctorate of Music at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, researching a dissertation on odd meters with a volume planned on Pat’s music, and I mentioned that I played jazz on the bassoon.

Pat answered the next evening: “sure, ask away.” Over the following four months I sent the list of tunes I hoped to discuss, Pat wrote back while “working like crazy now on a new record” (one reply went out at 3:10 AM), and by August he was asking me for a phone number. I kept the printouts in a folder marked “Metheny.” Every email visible in those photos is transcribed here, in order.

The emails led to a phone call that lasted over an hour. Pat told me he doesn’t listen to his own recordings very much. I laughed and told him he was missing some great stuff. He talked about Don Ellis’s influence on his music, especially since his brother, Mike Metheny, was a trumpet player. Parts of that interview are cited in my dissertation, The Exotic Rhythms of Don Ellis (2002), which describes Pat as a guitarist “who was influenced by Ellis recordings and considers exotic rhythms to be a standard component of his musical vocabulary” (p. 163; the footnote cites the telephone interview as April 1995).

The conversation that started on CompuServe in 1994 has continued, on and off, by email ever since.

In 2005 Sean was a member of the Pat Metheny Group Street Team for The Way Up world tour. The member card and the tour shirt are still in his archive.

Pat brought the Orchestrion Tour to the Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore on Wednesday, October 20, 2010, one of 19 North American dates that fall (tour announcement).

It was a solo show with a mechanical orchestra. The tour supported Orchestrion (Nonesuch, January 2010), and the announcement describes the rig: “several pianos, drum kit, marimbas, ‘guitar-bots,’ dozens of percussion instruments, and even cabinets of carefully tuned bottles,” all “struck, plucked, and otherwise played via the technology of solenoid switches and pneumatics,” and driven by Pat’s guitar.

Ten months earlier, on New Year’s Day 2010, my Predictions for 2010 post had already called it: “The Greatest Musicians of our Generation Go Device-less in 2010: Pat Metheny (Orchestrion).”

I went with friends. These are my photos from the street that night.

Three weeks to the day after San Francisco, Sean was back in the front row for the Kin (←→) tour, this time with six seats.

“When I joined the band hand-claps during this passage, I immediately drew the attention of Maestro Metheny himself who looked at me and shouted in my direction ‘YEAH!’ … For those 15-seconds, my heart raced — I was part of the Pat Metheny Unity Group.”

Sean ended his Strathmore review with a wish:

“Hopefully, one day I will find a way to shake Pat Metheny’s hand again and thank him for his unique inspiration.”

Four and a half months later, after the Unity Group’s show at Wolf Trap, he got the chance.

Sean’s one-line description of the clip on YouTube: “Bassoon vs Bass Clarinet.” The bassoon thread goes back to Lisner in 1997.

Twenty-one years after Lancaster, the music keeps moving. Side-Eye III+ came out on February 27, 2026, and the band is on the road through 2026, including a July 22 stop at the San Javier Jazz Festival in Spain.