Pat Metheny's US Orchestrion tour comes to a close this week with concerts along the Northeast. The Philadelphia Daily News says "the now meditative, now bluesy, now bopping or dramatically soaring music sounds very fine and 'in the pocket.'" Philadelphia Weekly calls it "dizzyingly advanced, but warm and full of heart." The Boston Phoenix says the album "reveals new depths at every turn"; the Boston Globe calls it "a soaring five-movement suite featuring some of the most intricate music he's ever created."
The North American leg of Pat Metheny's Orchestrion tour comes to a close this week with two concerts at New York's Town Hall on Friday and Saturday that Time Out New York has already billed as among "the weekend's must-see shows." Before then, Metheny and his one-man band perform at the Keswick Theatre in Philadelphia tonight, Strathmore in Bethesda tomorrow night, and the Orpheum in Boston on Thursday.
In a preview of tonight's show, the Philadelphia Daily News says the multitude of mechanized instruments in the orchestrion "will accompany Metheny's very alive guitar work in a lush new suite of songs, plus gems from his deep catalog."
Daily News writer Jonathan Takiff spoke with Metheny about the project, its history, the mechanics that make it all work, and the recently released Nonesuch album of the same name on which it is featured. "As previewed on Metheny's Orchestrion album deploying the same, um, ensemble," Takiff writes, "the now meditative, now bluesy, now bopping or dramatically soaring music sounds very fine and 'in the pocket' with the richly lyrical stuff this guitarist normally develops with his Pat Metheny Group—minus only the chanting vocals."
Hear what Metheny has to say and read the complete article at philly.com.
As Philadelphia Weekly explains it, "The former teen prodigy turned jazz guitar icon has done it all—or so it seemed until Orchestrion, Metheny's latest for Nonesuch." Writer David R. Adler says that, with Orchestrion, Metheny is "making music that's dizzyingly advanced, but warm and full of heart, the opposite of what you'd expect from machine-generated sound." Read more at philadelphiaweekly.com.
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In the lead-up to Thursday's performance at the Orpheum, Metheny is the subject of a feature article in the Boston Globe, which calls the orchestrion project Metheny's "most elaborate." Globe correspondent Andrew Gilbert describes the Orchestrion album as "a soaring five-movement suite featuring some of the most intricate music he's ever created."
Gilbert spoke at length with the guitarist/composer about the orchestrion, and with Eric Singer, the founder of the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (or Lemur), whose inventions helped bring it to life.
You'll find the complete article at boston.com.
The Boston Phoenix gives the Orchestrion album three stars. "As in most of Metheny's work," says Phoenix reviewer Jon Garelick, "what could be mistaken for glib virtuosity—or, in this case, gadgetry—reveals new depths at every turn." Read the review at thephoenix.com.
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For more on the remainder of the Orchestrion tour, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour. To pick up a copy of the album on CD or vinyl and receive instant downloads of the album as high-quality MP3s at no additional cost, head to the Nonesuch Store.
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