Pat Metheny Orchestrion at the Filmore – April 10, 2010
It’s not a secret I’ve been a fan of Pat Metheny for some decades now. My first live experience goes back to 1985, when during a visit to a relative in Maryland and got to see Pat Metheny Band at the Wolf Trap performing their Offramp tour (Pedro Aznar doing the brazilianesque Bah-dah-bahuêhh). What a treat! Since then, I’ve been fortunate to experience different incarnations of Pat, including a Quartet performance in Rio de Janeiro’s JazzMania in Ipanema. That quartet featured a totally wired Harvey Mason on drums and Charlie Haden on acoustic bass.
A few months ago, I received my Live Nation spam (not really–I like it) announcing a Pat Metheny’s concert at Jackie Gleason’s theater, in Miami Beach. I like Pat, I like the venue…why not? As I investigated further about the concert, its name Orchestrion caught my attention. What is that? Who will be playing with him?
As I read further into it, I realized that this would be a unique show. Pat would be playing alone…kinda. Instead, he would be accompanied by plethora of mechanized instruments programed by the man himself, controlled by computers, powered by hundreds of solenoid and hydraulic contraptions. Hmm, I am not one to enjoy one-man shows. I despise these guys that play cheesy South Florida bars with their lifeless MIDI devices.
So far, I was never disappointed by a Pat Metheny concert, so I thought, wadda heck, lez go! I got 4 tickets and brought along my wife a and another couple, close friends of ours.
Soon after arriving at the Filmore, me and my also tinkerer/techie buddy walked over to the stage to check out the devices to be used during the show. So far, nothing too impressive. A couple of acoustic guitars, some crazy looking pedals, two Vibraphones with mallets rigged for each individual note and some other hard to describe musical devices.
Pikasso - built by Linda Manzer (manzer.com)
Lights go off at the packed Fillmore auditorium and Pat walks onto the state with his guitar. Waves to the crowd, sits down and begin a short set of mellow acoustic pieces. For my taste, beautiful as usual. Pat has such an unique sound that mixes sounds of Central Brazil and the US Midwest. I suppose there must be some common ground between those places…or common pasture, if you will.
At some point, Pat pulls this strange looking guitar (see pic). He starts this hypnotic sitar-laden Indian groove, starting mellow and building up to complete nirvana. Pat ripped and shredded the Pikasso guitar and the crowd went wild.
Well, it’s been quite a few songs into this set and where are all the Orchestrion stuff? After playing one tune with this hi-hat-beat-time-keeping-thingy, the curtain peels off, revealing a huuuge stack of automated mechanical instruments – it was totally unexpected for me as I thought most gadgets were already in plain view. The crowd goes wild. There were a ton of instruments, drums and cymbals of all sizes and types, percussion, bells, congas, electric basses and the whole kitchen sink.
With the support of that “orchestra”, Pat performs the movements from his Orchestrion album which I was not familiar with, except for some things he posted on YouTube.
Between the Orchestrion movements, Pat attempted to furnish some explanation as to why he would embark such challenging and strange endeavor. Pat was the first one to admit he hasn’t even convinced himself and that he thinks this whole thing is borderline insane.
One interesting piece consisted of him layering some loops using all the instruments controlled by his guitar. The controlling aspect was a bit laggy but once the parts where picked up by the computer, they would be heavily “quantized” (midi programmers know what i am talking about) and then played back “in time”. Still, it was very cool and he ripped an amazing solo using that pseudo-horn sound via the ‘ole Roland Synth Off Rampish guitar.
Conclusion. I was not disappointed by Pat. He is truly a master, a virtuoso. Guitar-wise, he is at the top of his game in technique and soul. Do I prefer the Pat’s band? Absolutely. At the same time, this was such an unique show and one that I will remember for sure! If Orchestrion is your first Pat Metheny show, you may end up with a skewed perception of what he is all about, but you are surely in for a good time.
Did you attend to any of the Orchestrion concerts? What did you think? Leave a comment! Cheers, O.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment