Where’s The Orchestra?
Pat Metheny - Orchestrion
 
As many know, Todd Rundgren and Pat Metheny are my favourite artists, certainly as regards innovation, creativity, thinking outside the box and not influenced by commercial musical trends. I also make no apologies for referring to both on occasion as musical geniuses.

Although they work in different musical fields (I hate ‘labels’ but there is no denying that Rundgren will be seen as a rock musician and Metheny a jazz exponent) they are remarkably similar in they way they stretch or continually strive to reinvent themselves in those respective fields.

So it’s no surprise that with Rundgren having recently taken center ‘stage’ (from my Muirsical perspective) with his recent ‘A Wizard A True Star’ tour (which was as much musical theatre as rock concert), Metheny comes up with something to catch the attention even beyond that innovative Todd Tour…
 
In January, Grammy Award-winning composer-guitarist Pat Metheny released his latest solo album ‘Orchestrion’ and it may be his most ambitious project to date – it’s certainly going to be one of the most talked about.
It’s unarguably a solo album, Metheny being the only musician featured on the album, but unlike his ‘One Quiet Night’ release of 2003 (featuring only one instrument – the Baritone acoustic guitar with ‘Nashville’ tuning - tricky stringing for any guitarist to come to terms with) this album features a myriad of instruments played by Metheny, but not in any conventional sense…

This album sees him perform with a diverse set of acoustic instruments, but electronically triggered, prepared and built by a team that have presented him with a ‘solenoid’ orchestra that includes, in amongst the Orchestrion collection, piano, various percussion, and a collection of tuned bottles.

Using software programming and solenoid switches Metheny controls or ‘plays’ each instrument via his guitar or various foot pedals. Although triggering such instrumentation is clearly not the same as playing them, it should be noted that Metheny scored every note and musical piece heard and does play some of the sounds through his guitar simultaneously but is, for the most part, improvising or soloing on the guitar over the Orchestrion pieces he triggers.

The Orchestrion is hardly a new invention – it was conceived as far back as the late 19th Century and driven by 'player-piano' technology.
Metheny’s fascination with this form of instrumentation has produced this new album of five pieces, or movements, which do indeed sound orchestrated and produce a soundscape of textures not heard (on a Metheny solo project) since his superb ‘Secret Story’ album of 1992 (a personal favourite).

On that album however he was assisted by other contributing musicians, conventional orchestrations, choir and more traditional instrumentation – this is a whole different set of musical mechanics but, for me, the result is the same… captivating, eminently listenable and at times quite beautiful.
And, somewhat ironically perhaps, very… human.
But don’t take my word for it – check out the making-of video from the man himself…
Metheny is touring the concept and sell-out shows are already facts of the musical matter, with dates and shows across Europe (including strongholds such as Italy and Spain), the States, and South Korea and Japan spread across 2010.

Orchestrion is already one of my favourite albums of the year, and indeed is behind only Rock Sugar’s ‘Reimaginator’ (radically different musically from Metheny’s release, but just as innovative) as regards best of the year.
And although it’s only March as I write this review and make that claim, it’s going to take an extraordinarily good ‘normal’ album to knock either of those albums from the Top 2 spots.

Ross Muir
March 2010