Pat Metheny featuring Christian McBride & Antonio Sánchez
Released in January 2008
JazzTimes Top 10 Albums of 2008
Grammy Nominee for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Individual or Group 2009
Youtube: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_ndI-zPL7e_fq5a_qk-Xn-jqCiR43TLyrM
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/6vxIAuAUCL4G3CbnYr5HwS?si=xKKC6lMsQTeUJWPzIqjSJA
About:
Pat Metheny’s new album Day Trip documents 17-time Grammy Award winner Metheny’s latest trio, featuring acclaimed sidemen Christian McBride (bass) and Antonio Sanchez (drums). This trio was formed by Metheny in 2002 and has played concerts all around the globe with performances in Australia, Europe, Asia, Africa and all across the United States and Canada. The group finally made it into the studio to record this music on a single day off during one of their most recent U.S. tours. All ten tracks on Day Trip are original Metheny compositions, including “Is This America? (Katrina 2005),” a song about the devastation in New Orleans, and “The Red One,” which first appeared on the John Scofield and Pat Metheny album I Can See Your House From Here (Blue Note 1994).
Over the course of three decades, guitarist Pat Metheny has set himself apart from the jazz mainstream, expanding and blurring boundaries and musical styles. His body of work includes 17 Grammy Awards in nine separate categories (breaking the record for multi-category wins); a series of influential trio recordings; award winning solo albums; scores for hit Hollywood motion pictures; and collaborations and duets with major artists such as Ornette Coleman, Steve Reich, Charlie Haden, Jim Hall and many others. His band, the Pat Metheny Group, founded in 1977, is the only ensemble in history to win Grammys for seven consecutive releases. In addition to his own critically acclaimed recordings, Christian McBride is known as the first-call bassist for a vast array of jazz’s most influential artists. He has played with Diana Krall, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Hancock, Joshua Redman, Jack DeJohnette, Roy Haynes, Chick Corea, and Ray Brown’s “Superbass” with John Clayton, among others—as well as pop, soul, and classical musicians like Kathleen Battle, Carly Simon, Sting, Queen Latifa and the late James Brown.Antonio Sanchez has been playing with the Pat Metheny Group and Pat Metheny Trio since 2002. He has also performed and recorded with Pacquito D’Rivera, Danílo Perez, the late Michael Brecker (with whom he recorded the Grammy-winning album Wide Angles), David Sanchez, Charlie Haden, John Patitucci, Chris Potter, Avishai Cohen, Marcus Roberts, Dave Samuels, Chick Corea, Claudia Acuña, and Luciana Souza, among others. Sanchez’s debut recording as a leader, Migration (Camjazz), was released earlier this year.
Track Listing:
1. Son of Thirteen (Pat Metheny) 5:49
(Grammy Nominee for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo 2009)
2. At Last You’re Here (Pat Metheny) 8:00
3. Let’s Move (Pat Metheny) 5:21
4. Snova (Pat Metheny) 6:01
5. Calvin’s Keys (Pat Metheny) 7:31
6. Is This America? (Katrina 2005) (Pat Metheny) 4:36
7. When We Were Free (Pat Metheny) 9:08
8. Dreaming Trees (Pat Metheny) 7:47
9. The Red One (Pat Metheny) 4:50
10. Day Trip (Pat Metheny) 9:03
Personnel:
Pat Metheny: guitar
Christian McBride: bass
Antonio Sanchez: drums
Recorded October 19, 2005, at Right Track Recording, New York, NY
Produced by Pat Metheny
Engineered by Pete Karam
Assistant Engineers: Hyomin Lee
Mixed by Joe Ferla
Mastered by Mark Wilder
Design by Barbara deWilde
Cover painting by Josh George
Review:
Pat Metheny is best known for his 30 years and running with the Pat Metheny Group. Among his widely varied projects, however, the trio holds a special place, beginning in 1976 with his debut album, Bright Size Life, featuring Jaco Pastorius and Bob Moses. Since then Metheny has worked in trios with Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins (Rejoicing), Dave Holland and Roy Haynes (Question and Answer) and Larry Grenadier and Bill Stewart (Trio 99>00, Trio Live). Even those who admire the outsized ambition and sunny accessibility of the Pat Metheny Group tend to find the guitarist’s trio dates refreshing, a return to first jazz principles. Such is the case with Day Trip, the premiere studio offering from a lineup that has already drawn concert crowds for several years.
That Metheny has handpicked two high-caliber partners is no surprise. Philadelphia’s Christian McBride is a proven artist with a multi-stylistic appetite, equally virtuosic on acoustic and electric bass. Antonio Sanchez, from Mexico, did solid if unheralded work on the New York scene before becoming a Pat Metheny Group member and the drummer in this, Metheny’s latest trio. Migration, Sanchez’s well-conceived debut album for CAM Jazz, features Metheny on two cuts and underscores the magnetism of the relationship they’ve built.
On Question and Answer, and to some extent with Grenadier and Stewart, Metheny made a point of playing standard tunes. Day Trip is a bit different. There are 10 previously unrecorded originals and no standards, much like the two recent collaborative discs with Brad Mehldau. There is more wood and steel in Metheny’s electric sound than in years past, most clearly on “At Last You’re Here,” a mellow straight-eighth tune in three, and “Snova,” a bossa with a melodic arc that could be called Mehldau-esque. Listen closely to the intros on the nylon-string reverie “Is This America? (Katrina 2005),” as well as the steel-string acoustic ballad “Dreaming Trees,” and you can hear Metheny breathe in between chords.
On the uptempo side, “Let’s Move” and “Day Trip” are boppish heads in the “H&H” mold, but with heightened speed and complexity. In McBride’s kung-fu mastery of the unison breaks, and Sanchez’s accenting of every hairpin rhythmic turn, one hears a band in bloom, impossibly tight, harnessing chops to musical effect. The opening samba “Son of Thirteen” finds Sanchez practically four-handed, playing grooves inside of grooves. Live, when Metheny pairs off into duos with each player, the band’s inner mechanisms are all the more apparent.
Metheny’s signature Roland synth-guitar makes its appearance on the curious rock-reggae number “The Red One” and on “When We Were Free.” The latter, in heavy, Elvin Jones-ish 3/4 time, has taken the place of “Question and Answer” as a live showstopper. Between the opening vamp and first chorus, the tune modulates up a major third, from C minor to E minor. About eight minutes in, the volume comes down and the mood grows ominous; Sanchez’s rimshots, sparsely placed and drenched in echo, ring out like distant gunfire. In concert the trio draws this passage out as the lights gradually fade, along with the sound. The tune ends in full darkness.
It’s worth noting another of McBride’s recent trio engagements: the September 2007 Carnegie Hall gig with Sonny Rollins and Roy Haynes. (Metheny was there to listen.) Much fanfare surrounded Rollins’ return to the trio idiom, and his choice of two key Metheny allies says something, however indirectly, about the guitarist’s stature. Having won Grammys in every category from rock to new age, Metheny is still among the most authoritative of jazz artists. Day Trip bears that out especially well.
David R. Adler (JazzTimes)
