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Front Row · A fan’s more than 40 years with Pat Metheny

October 20, 2010 Orchestrion

Orchestrion at the Hippodrome

Hippodrome Theatre, Baltimore

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.

Sean Fenlon, in a plaid shirt and dark sports coat and holding books, talks with a friend on a Baltimore street at night
Sean, right, in the plaid shirt and sports coat, with a friend that night.AI-restored from Sean’s original photo
Two men talking on the sidewalk at night under a theater marquee lined with light bulbs, one holding a book
On the sidewalk under the marquee lights.AI-restored from Sean’s original photo
The Hippodrome Theatre on Eutaw Street in Baltimore: a tan brick facade with three arched windows, a vertical “Hippodrome” sign and an iron canopy over the doors
The Hippodrome, photographed in 2012. Not from Sean’s archive: Photo: Smallbones, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Pat Metheny on stage surrounded by the mechanical instruments of the Orchestrion
The Orchestrion rig on the same tour, Grand Prairie, Texas, April 13, 2010. Not from Sean’s archive: Photo: Steve Rainwater, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (resized).