Pat Metheny Road To The Sun 2LP

TAS Rated 4/5 Music, 4/5 Sonics in the May/June 2021 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

There are only a handful of living musicians who can continually reinvent themselves year after year, and even fewer still who can claim to have maintained equal degrees of innovation and excellence across a career spanning decades.

Pat Metheny is one of the few artists in the world who can lay claim to such a description. On his latest album, Road To The Sun, Pat Metheny surprises us once again with his seemingly endless ability to harvest new vistas while retaining the instantly recognizable Metheny sound.

With two major new works, performed by five of the world's leading guitarists, Metheny charts a new way of obliterating boundaries between genres while simultaneously unveiling new facets of an already expansive personal language.

Grammy-winner Jason Vieaux, described by NPR as "perhaps the most precise and soulful classical guitarist of his generation" was tapped by Metheny to perform his four-movement solo guitar suite Four Paths Of Light.

The centerpiece of this landmark recording is Road To The Sun, a six-movement piece for fellow Grammy-award winning Los Angeles Guitar Quartet - Metheny describes them as "one of the best bands in the world."

In the end, Road To The Sun is nothing if not another truly great Pat Metheny record. It will rank alongside Secret Story, Bright Size Life, 80/81,One Quiet Night, Still Life (talking), Song X, and all the rest as being yet another unexpected and almost willfully inscrutable plot twist, inevitable to a genre with only one common element: Metheny himself.

"I am blown away by this new (Metheny) composition every time we play it. Such beautiful melodic and harmonic flow! Although his fans will recognize it as undeniably Metheny, he develops his thematic material so skillfully that the average concert-goer will get lost in his world. A soundscape of epic proportions." - Scott Tennant (Los Angeles Guitar Quartet)

"Whenever an artist of Pat's significance writes not only a substantial work, but a piece that requires real virtuosity to perform it (and has his musical imprint all over it), it's a big moment for classical guitar." - Jason Vieaux

Road to the Sun showcases Metheny's developed musical hallmarks in compelling new and bravely wrought compositions, expertly performed by kindred spirits and modern masters.

The first thing to know about this album is that it's classical guitar and, apart from strumming on two tracks, Pat Metheny plays on only the final track - and that's not even his own composition but Arvo Pärt's Für Alina. But keep an open mind and open ears, because on this album you'll hear some of the world's finest classical guitarists playing new Metheny compositions of great beauty and virtuosity... For Metheny lovers or anyone interested in classical guitar, this album's a must. And for anyone not yet familiar with classical guitar, this stunning album could well be their gateway drug to a whole new universe of wonders.

The four-movement suite 'Four Paths of Light,' a solo recital for Vieaux, opens with him playing intricate and challenging arpeggiations on steel string acoustic guitar, generating the kind of sheer rhythmic drive of Bola Sete or Egberto Gismonti. The second movement is a more contemplative offering that carries some of Metheny's signature sweet melodicism while the third movement is brimming with complex counterpoint and rich chord voicings that are flawlessly executed by the renowned Bach interpreter. The final movement is the most affecting, underscored by a sense of poignancy that is at the heart of Metheny's most enduring compositions. The LAGQ interprets the composer's six-part 'Road to the Sun' suite with impeccable precision and boundless heart on performances that are alternately buoyant, bracing, and gentle. A bonus track has the composer himself playing shimmering 42-string Pikasso guitar on an atmospheric 'Fur Alina.'