Pat Metheny

By the age of 15 Pat Metheny was working regularly with the best jazz musicians in his home town of Kansas City. He burst onto the international jazz scene in 1974 with his soon-to-become trademarked playing style, which blended the loose and flexible articulation customarily reserved for horn players with an advanced rhythmic and harmonic sensibility—a way of playing and improvising that was modern in conception but grounded deeply in the jazz tradition of melody, swing, and the blues. With the release of his first album, Bright Size Life (1975), he reinvented the traditional “jazz guitar” sound for a new generation of players. Throughout his career, Metheny has continued to re-define the genre by utiliziing new technology and constantly working to evolve the improvisational and sonic potential of his instrument.