A true guitar icon in Jazz announced for Copenhagen Jazz Festival 2023


American guitar giant Pat Metheny is back with a world tour showcasing a new generation of jazz talents with his latest project “Side-Eye”. This summer the tour reaches Copenhagen Jazz Festival and DR Koncerthuset

Pat Metheny Side-Eye (US) – Copenhagen Jazz Festival 2023
Friday July 7, 8:00 PM – DR Koncerthuset, Koncertsalen
Read more / Buy tickets / Sign up for our newsletter to gain access to exclusive presale for our upcoming announcements

As is only fitting for a musician known for an extensive touring regime, Pat Metheny has announced over 100 concerts world-wide to accompany the release of “Side-Eye”. This upcoming live version of Side-Eye will feature the phenomenally talented pianist/organist/keyboardist Chris Fishman. The drum chair in this relatively new project has been filled to-date by some of the most exciting players around including Eric Harland, Anwar Marshall, and most notably, Marcus Gilmore, who is spotlighted on the recording. The exciting young New Orleans drummer, Joe Dyson, will be featured in the upcoming live performances around the world.

Metheny explains: “I wanted to create an ongoing platform to host a rotating cast of the newer generations of musicians who have particularly caught my interest along the way. From my earliest days in Kansas City onward, I was the beneficiary of so many older musicians hiring me, which gave me a chance to develop through the prism of their experiences and the particular demands of what their music implied.”

Pat Metheny was born in Kansas City on August 12, 1954 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, Pat Metheny has continued to re-define the genre by utilizing new technology and constantly working to evolve the improvisational and sonic potential of his instrument. Metheny’s versatility is almost 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. Metheny’s body of work includes compositions for solo guitar, small ensembles, electric and acoustic instruments, large orchestras, and ballet pieces, with settings ranging from modern jazz to rock to classical.

Copenhagen Jazz Festival and DR Koncerthuset are proud to once again be able to present the ever-innovative Pat Metheny and his handpicked selection of young, talented sidemen at this summer’s festival.

Copenhagen Jazz Festival 2023 takes place from June 30 – July 9. Follow the upcoming announcements here at Jazz.dk.