September 14, 2010

Pat Metheny. Download image.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - UAB's Alys Stephens Center will present jazz guitarist and composer Pat Metheny at 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 1, 2010, in the center, 1200 10th Ave. South. Tickets are $55, $48, $38; $20 student tickets. Call 205-975-2787 or go to www.AlysStephens.org.

Come early at 7 p.m. for a pre-concert jazz discussion with Steve Roberts, D.M.A., assistant professor of jazz studies in the UAB Department of Music. Metheny also will participate in a Q-&-A Thursday, Sept. 30, which will be open to music students, music educators and area musicians. Space is limited. For more information, contact Heath Mixon, ASC Education Department, at 205-934-6012 or heathmix@uab.edu.

An Alys Stephens Center favorite, Metheny has won an extraordinary 17 Grammy Awards and been nominated 33 times in 12 categories, more than any performer in Grammy history. Metheny will return to the Alys Stephens Center to begin his new tour and unveil a new genre of music, acoustically driven "solo ensemble" he has dubbed "orchestrionics." The performance will feature music from "Orchestrion," his latest CD of all new original compositions, and some older tunes from the Metheny songbook.

According to Metheny's tour bio, "Orchestrion" brings a musical idea from the late 19th and early 20th centuries - a large, mechanical, multi-instrument device that utilizes actual orchestral instruments of various types, called an orchestrion - to the technologies of today. His concept includes a large ensemble of acoustic instruments, including several pianos, a drum kit, marimbas, "guitar-bots," percussion instruments and even cabinets of carefully tuned bottles. Through Metheny's guitar and compositional mind, five new original pieces showcase the instruments as they are struck, plucked and otherwise played via the technology of solenoid switches and pneumatics. Metheny worked for months with a brilliant team of scientists and engineers to develop and assemble the "New Orchestrion" for this project, according to the bio. More info is available on his website, www.PatMetheny.com.

"As the instruments started to trickle in from the various inventors," Metheny says, "the experience of writing for them and figuring out what might be possible with them provided a self-imposed challenge that proved to be difficult and time-consuming, but absolutely exhilarating. I am excited to share this project. If nothing else, this has turned out to be something unique. And in the process of developing all this music and these instruments and discovering what they can do and what they are good at, I learned so much.

"It feels like progress and has gotten some notes out of me that I didn't know were there," he says. "But the surprise was just how far I was able to go with it all. Within this new environment, I found something in there that took me to some new places."

About UAB's Alys Stephens Center

The Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center, part of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is one of the Southeast's premier performing arts centers, hosting the best in international, national and local performance. Home to the UAB departments of theatre and music and the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, the ASC also presents its own season, bringing the world's best music, dance, theater, comedy and family entertainment to Alabama.