Pat Metheny Performing with Non-Human Orchestra
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 2:31 amhttp://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/Guitarist+Metheny+tunes+with+high+tech+human+orchestra/2962439/story.html
Vancouver Sun
Guitarist Pat Metheny tunes up with high-tech, non-human orchestra
By MARKE ANDREWS
April 28, 2010
Pat Metheny and the Orchestrion
Saturday, May 1, 8 p.m.
The Centre in Vancouver for the Performing Arts
Tickets: $75 and $66.50. ticketmaster.ca or 604 280-3311.
VANCOUVER -- Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny is touring with his Orchestrion, a kind of robot orchestra that he has programmed to accompany and improvise. The following is a question-and-answer interview done by e-mail:
Vancouver Sun: Let’s talk logistics. How many trucks are involved to haul the Orchestrion gear, how many road and tech staff are needed to set up and tear down, and how long does it take to set things up?
Metheny: It really isn’t all that different on a production level from playing a trio gig or a concert with my regular group. It is always about the same; a few key people and six hours or so to get it all up and running.
Vancouver Sun: When it’s just you and the machines, do you miss the human element? Do you get nostalgic for Charlie Haden’s folksy humour?
Metheny: I guess you could ask the same thing of any musician who plays a solo concert. This is my instrument. There are a million ways I can set up conversations, questions and answers, calls and responses and everything from the most composed and organized sounds to the most totally improvised sounds, using many combinations of instruments or any solo instruments alone. It is really just a matter of what story you want to tell.
Vancouver Sun: When improvising with a band of musicians, you can each spark off what each other is doing and take the music to a different place, good or bad. Can this happen with the Orchestrion?
Metheny: Of course. It can be whatever I want it to be from extremely detailed composition to 100-per-cent purely improvised and every shade in between.
The Orchestrion project is really open-ended. I have heard a lot of speculation from people who have no idea about how it all works that is mostly really technically wrong and is mostly about their own insecurities and fears. Again, a lot of what seems to concern people about this are questions that they might ask of anyone playing any kind of a solo concert on any kind of an instrument.
For me, what is represented in this project is organic to my interests and is intrinsic to the fairly odd skill set that I have had to develop, not just with this project, but with everything I have had to do to be the kind of musician that I ended up being. Knobs, wires, electricity, and all the rest are part and parcel of the world I have lived in over the past 40 years or so, not unlike what reeds are to sax players and mouthpieces are to trumpet players. All of this, including computers and everything else, make up my instrument. I am always looking to see where that all might take me. [The Orchestrion] is the latest manifestation of that search.
Vancouver Sun: From a musician’s standpoint, what do you get out of your work with the Orchestrion?
Metheny: The experience of committing to this, writing music for the instruments, then preparing for an extensive tour is unbelievably challenging in every way. Besides the huge mass of technical things that I had to formulate and implement, I also had to examine my own views about music from many different angles. I am not interested in any music that doesn’t groove or does not reflect spirit and soulfulness. Had I not been able to reconcile my standards of what is contained in those needs with the realities of what this setting offered, I would have bagged it. However, once the instruments came in and I started to figure out what was really possible with them, that thought never again crossed my mind.
What I really like is it gets people talking. Everyone has an opinion about this. That is a great byproduct of why we all go out and do the things we do. But what many people have said is that they are intrigued by the “how” of it for about the first 10 minutes, and the remaining two hours and 20 minutes, they forget about all that and are just inside the music. When I started hearing that from people, I recognized that it had basically the same trajectory with me — the first few days I was just thrilled with the instruments, then it went away and I was just writing music for a new platform in a different way. The whole thing is just that — a new medium to tell stories.
Vancouver Sun: From a composer’s standpoint, what do you get out of your work with the Orchestrion?
Metheny: This has been a rewarding and deeply educational and thought-provoking project on every level. It has made me a better musician and composer in many, many ways. This is not better or not worse than anything else, but it really is different, and the different part of it is a big part of the attraction for me. And it’s really proven to be a very fertile compositional zone. I wouldn’t have got to these notes under any other circumstances.
Vancouver Sun: Will you use the Orchestrion for future recordings and tours, or is it a one-shot deal?
Metheny: This feels like version 1.0 of this for me. Now I have heard from a lot of other instrument-builders who are doing other interesting things, I can imagine expanding the ensemble quite a bit.
Vancouver Sun
Guitarist Pat Metheny tunes up with high-tech, non-human orchestra
By MARKE ANDREWS
April 28, 2010
Pat Metheny and the Orchestrion
Saturday, May 1, 8 p.m.
The Centre in Vancouver for the Performing Arts
Tickets: $75 and $66.50. ticketmaster.ca or 604 280-3311.
VANCOUVER -- Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny is touring with his Orchestrion, a kind of robot orchestra that he has programmed to accompany and improvise. The following is a question-and-answer interview done by e-mail:
Vancouver Sun: Let’s talk logistics. How many trucks are involved to haul the Orchestrion gear, how many road and tech staff are needed to set up and tear down, and how long does it take to set things up?
Metheny: It really isn’t all that different on a production level from playing a trio gig or a concert with my regular group. It is always about the same; a few key people and six hours or so to get it all up and running.
Vancouver Sun: When it’s just you and the machines, do you miss the human element? Do you get nostalgic for Charlie Haden’s folksy humour?
Metheny: I guess you could ask the same thing of any musician who plays a solo concert. This is my instrument. There are a million ways I can set up conversations, questions and answers, calls and responses and everything from the most composed and organized sounds to the most totally improvised sounds, using many combinations of instruments or any solo instruments alone. It is really just a matter of what story you want to tell.
Vancouver Sun: When improvising with a band of musicians, you can each spark off what each other is doing and take the music to a different place, good or bad. Can this happen with the Orchestrion?
Metheny: Of course. It can be whatever I want it to be from extremely detailed composition to 100-per-cent purely improvised and every shade in between.
The Orchestrion project is really open-ended. I have heard a lot of speculation from people who have no idea about how it all works that is mostly really technically wrong and is mostly about their own insecurities and fears. Again, a lot of what seems to concern people about this are questions that they might ask of anyone playing any kind of a solo concert on any kind of an instrument.
For me, what is represented in this project is organic to my interests and is intrinsic to the fairly odd skill set that I have had to develop, not just with this project, but with everything I have had to do to be the kind of musician that I ended up being. Knobs, wires, electricity, and all the rest are part and parcel of the world I have lived in over the past 40 years or so, not unlike what reeds are to sax players and mouthpieces are to trumpet players. All of this, including computers and everything else, make up my instrument. I am always looking to see where that all might take me. [The Orchestrion] is the latest manifestation of that search.
Vancouver Sun: From a musician’s standpoint, what do you get out of your work with the Orchestrion?
Metheny: The experience of committing to this, writing music for the instruments, then preparing for an extensive tour is unbelievably challenging in every way. Besides the huge mass of technical things that I had to formulate and implement, I also had to examine my own views about music from many different angles. I am not interested in any music that doesn’t groove or does not reflect spirit and soulfulness. Had I not been able to reconcile my standards of what is contained in those needs with the realities of what this setting offered, I would have bagged it. However, once the instruments came in and I started to figure out what was really possible with them, that thought never again crossed my mind.
What I really like is it gets people talking. Everyone has an opinion about this. That is a great byproduct of why we all go out and do the things we do. But what many people have said is that they are intrigued by the “how” of it for about the first 10 minutes, and the remaining two hours and 20 minutes, they forget about all that and are just inside the music. When I started hearing that from people, I recognized that it had basically the same trajectory with me — the first few days I was just thrilled with the instruments, then it went away and I was just writing music for a new platform in a different way. The whole thing is just that — a new medium to tell stories.
Vancouver Sun: From a composer’s standpoint, what do you get out of your work with the Orchestrion?
Metheny: This has been a rewarding and deeply educational and thought-provoking project on every level. It has made me a better musician and composer in many, many ways. This is not better or not worse than anything else, but it really is different, and the different part of it is a big part of the attraction for me. And it’s really proven to be a very fertile compositional zone. I wouldn’t have got to these notes under any other circumstances.
Vancouver Sun: Will you use the Orchestrion for future recordings and tours, or is it a one-shot deal?
Metheny: This feels like version 1.0 of this for me. Now I have heard from a lot of other instrument-builders who are doing other interesting things, I can imagine expanding the ensemble quite a bit.