Guitar Legend Pat Metheny Brings 'Dream Box' Tour to Davidson Theatre

CAPA hosts legendary American guitarist, composer, and improviser Pat Metheny in a solo performance March 9, 2024, at the Davidson Theatre at the Riffe Center (77 S. High St.).

Tickets start at $37 and may be purchased beginning at 10 am Friday, December 22, at the CBUSArts Ticket Center at the Ohio Theatre (39 E. State St.), online at www.capa.com or www.CBUSArts.com, and by phone at (614) 469-0939.

After a globe-trotting 33-stop tour last spring and summer with his Side-Eye band, the “Dream Box” Tour gives Metheny the chance to explore his approach to being a solo performer in both traditional and unorthodox ways in the kinds of intimate venues that will offer audiences an absolutely unique concert experience.

“I’m really looking forward to doing this pretty significant tour that will just be me. I’m going to draw on all my solo records, from New Chautauqua on, and I’ve written a lot of that kind of material: narrative, storytelling, with expositional-type improvising. I did a test run of solo concerts a couple years ago and I really, really enjoyed it. It’s going to be something quite different for me, that intimate relationship. I think I’ll probably actually talk some on the gig, which I generally don’t like to do, but it sort of fits with what this evening will be,” Metheny said.

Calling the guitarist’s new album, Dream Box, “a fascinating peek into his creative mind,” Pitchfork went on to rave: “Metheny remains underrated for his unending drive to experiment and challenge himself. … No two of his records involve quite the same approach, whether that means finding new collaborators, new instrumentation, or on releases like Dream Box, new ways to channel his creative process. … The new compositions are highlights, tracing their central motifs to unexpected destinations … his aim here is for simple but immersive mood-setting.”

Metheny has produced a catalog of recordings that, measured in terms of influence, is in a class by itself: 50 recordings that have won 20 Grammy Awards in 12 different categories. New Chautauqua (1979) almost single-handedly defined an era of instrumental steel-stringed Americana that spawned legions of imitators. Zero Tolerance for Silence pushed the boundaries of modern music-making once again and served as a companion piece to the Grammy-winning disc Secret Story. The Orchestrion Project – for which Metheny wrote the music and built a series of instruments to be controlled by his guitar, recording the results both in the studio and in a live concert – was so new in conception and execution that even a decade-plus later, it still stands apart from any previous ideas of what a solo performer might achieve alone onstage.

Pat Metheny was born in Lee's Summit, Missouri in1954 into a musical family. Starting on trumpet at the age of 8, Metheny switched to guitar at age 12. By the age of 15, he was working regularly with the best jazz musicians in Kansas City, receiving valuable on-the-bandstand experience at an unusually young age. Metheny first burst onto the international jazz scene in 1974. Over the course of his three-year stint with vibraphone great Gary Burton, the young Missouri native already displayed 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 redefine the genre by utilizing new technology and constantly working to evolve the improvisational and sonic potential of his instrument. Metheny's versatility is nearly without peer on any instrument. Over the years, he has performed with artists as diverse as Steve Reich to Ornette Coleman to Herbie Hancock to Jim Hall to Milton Nascimento to David Bowie

As well as being an accomplished musician, Metheny has also participated in the academic arena as a music educator. At 18, he was the youngest teacher ever at the University of Miami. At 19, he became the youngest teacher ever at the Berklee College of Music, where he also received an honorary doctorate more than twenty years later, in 1996. He has also recently received honorary doctorates from McGill University in Montreal and from the University of Missouri. He also has been instrumental in the development of several new kinds of guitars such as the 42-string Pikasso guitar, Ibanez’s Pat Metheny series jazz guitars, and a variety of other custom instruments. It is one thing to attain popularity as a musician, but it is another to receive the kind of acclaim Metheny has garnered from critics and peers.

In 2018, he became an NEA Jazz Master, the highest honor the United States bestows on jazz artists. Over the years, he has won countless polls as "Best Jazz Guitarist" and awards, including three gold records for (Still Life) Talking, Letter from Home, and Secret Story. He has also won 20 Grammy Awards spread out over a variety of different categories including Best Rock Instrumental, Best Contemporary Jazz Recording, Best Jazz Instrumental Solo, and Best Instrumental Composition, at one point winning seven consecutive Grammys for seven consecutive albums. In 2015 he was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame, becoming only the fourth guitarist to be included (along with Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, and Wes Montgomery) and its youngest member.