Artist: Pat Metheny

Patrick Bruce Metheny is an American jazz guitarist and composer. 

He was the leader of the Pat Metheny Group (1977–2010) and continues to work in various small-combo, duet, and solo settings, as well as other side projects. His style incorporates elements of progressive and contemporary jazz, latin jazz, and jazz fusion. He has three gold albums and 20 Grammy Awards, and is the only person to have won Grammys in 10 categories. 

Pat Metheny's life changed after hearing the album  Four & More by Miles Davis. Soon after, he was captivated by Wes Montgomery's album  Smokin' at the Half Note which was released in 1965. He cites the Beatles, Miles Davis, and Montgomery as having the most impact on his music. 

When he was 15, Metheny won a scholarship from  Down Beat magazine to a one-week jazz camp where he was mentored by guitarist Attila Zoller, who then invited him to New York City to meet guitarist Jim Hall and bassist Ron Carter. As an adult, he moved to Boston to teach at the Berklee College of Music with jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton and established a reputation as a prodigy. 

Metheny released his debut album, Bright Size Life  (ECM, 1976), with Jaco Pastorius on bass guitar and Bob Moses on drums. His next album,  Watercolors (ECM, 1977), was the first time he recorded with pianist Lyle Mays, who became his most frequent collaborator. The album also featured  Danny Gottlieb, who became the drummer for the first version of the Pat Metheny Group. With Metheny, Mays, and Gottlieb, the fourth member was bassist Mark Egan when the album Pat Metheny Group (ECM, 1978) was released. 

The second group album, American Garage (ECM, 1979), reached number 1 on the Billboard jazz chart and crossed over onto the pop charts. From 1982 to 1985, the Pat Metheny Group released Offramp  (ECM, 1982), a live album, Travels (ECM, 1983),  First Circle (ECM, 1984), and The Falcon and the Snowman (EMI, 1985), a soundtrack album for the movie of the same name for which they collaborated on the single "This Is Not America" with David Bowie. The song reached number 14 in the British Top 40 in 1985 and number 32 in the U.S. First Circle was Metheny's last album with ECM; he had been a key artist for the label but left following disagreements with the label's founder, Manfred Eicher. 

Still Life (Talking) (Geffen, 1987) featured new group members trumpeter Mark Ledford, vocalist David Blamires, and percussionist Armando Marçal. Aznar returned for vocals and guitar on Letter from Home  (Geffen, 1989).

Metheny and Mays themselves refer to the next three Pat Metheny Group releases as a triptych:We Live Here (Geffen, 1995), Quartet (Geffen, 1996), and Imaginary Day (Warner Bros., 1997). Moving away from the Latin style which had dominated the releases of the previous ten years, these albums included experiments with sequenced synthetic drums on one track, free-form improvisation on acoustic instruments, and symphonic signatures, blues, and sonata schemes.