Pat Metheny: The ECM Years, 1975–1984. By Mervyn Cooke

Abstract

In a 1958 UNESCO address, the pianist and composer John Lewis noted: ‘The audience for jazz can be widened if we strengthen our work with structure. If there is more of a reason for what’s going on, there’ll be more overall sense, and, therefore, more interest for the listener.’ Over time, with steady personnel and frequent touring, Lewis and the Modern Jazz Quartet devised their own solutions to the structural form ‘problem’ in small-group jazz, using novel blends of composed ensemble sections and solo improvisations that often replaced the head–solos–head schema and the use of repeated chorus structures for improvisations. How the guitarist Pat Metheny addressed that same problem in a later decade is one of the central themes of Mervyn Cooke’s excellent new book. Cooke highlights Metheny’s compositional structures (along with those of his collaborator, the pianist Lyle Mays) through a vocabulary of narrative and storytelling, ultimately folding in Metheny’s growing involvement with film music to underscore a burgeoning cinematic conception for his compositions. He accounts for sectional designs, composed interlude sections to launch improvisations, ways in which underlying harmonies for improvisations might emerge from details of those transitions, predetermined ascending half-step modulations during the solos to enhance excitement and tension, as well as numerous other factors. All contribute to a view of Metheny’s small-group work as ‘like a modern big band’, in the words of one of the players.