Whitworth brings jazz legend Pat Metheny to town

There are few artists in contemporary jazz as well known and loved as Pat Metheny. The guitarist has played in many genres – jazz, country, rock, folk. His list of collaborators goes on for days. David Bowie, Charlie Haden, Herbie Hancock, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, and others. He has 20 Grammy Awards.

This weekend, Metheny returns to Spokane as a solo guest artist, working with the Whitworth University Jazz Ensemble, performing at the Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox.

Dan Keberle, Whitworth music professor and organizer of the guest artist jazz series, said in an email that while Metheny has an extensive background teaching young musicians (the 61-year-old got his first teaching gig at the University of Miami at age 18), this will be a relatively new experience for the jazz master. He’ll rehearse with the group once, then they’ll take to the stage and put on a show.

“Understandably, some jazz artists will only perform with their own band because they don’t know what to expect musically from collegiate age jazz students,” Keberle said. “Without sounding boastful, having had such a strong music and jazz program at Whitworth with many very talented jazz students (and faculty who are dynamite teachers) for almost 30 years has helped make Whitworth a place where jazz artists do feel comfortable performing with young but talented jazz musicians.”

The concert will feature Metheny “performing with college students, he will be playing some of his original music that has been arranged for solo jazz guitar and jazz band, plus some jazz standards that will feature him soloing with the jazz band,” Keberle said. “I think that it is an inspiring experience for our students and for our audience to hear him play in a jazz big band setting, and to play well known jazz standards like ‘Cherokee,’ ‘All The Things You Are,’ ‘Gentle Rain’ … in addition to some of his originals like ‘Have You Heard’ and ‘It’s Just Talk.’ ”

In an email interview with Metheny, we discussed the joy of working with college kids, how it feels to be among the “old guard” of jazz and the universality of music.

Q. What is it about working with college musicians that you enjoy?

A. One of the great things about music is that chronological age doesn’t figure into the reality of playing all that much assuming everyone is fluent in the language of the music at hand. I have always been the beneficiary of the generosity of musicians, even when I was a very young kid coming up through the scene in Kansas City. I am always happy to be around people who are interested in music, no matter what the circumstances.

Q. There’s been much hand-wringing for a couple decades now about the “death” of jazz. No one plays it, no one listens to it, no one buys it, supposedly. Yet 2014 saw the release of two acclaimed films that featured jazz, “Whiplash,” and “Birdman,” which featured that amazing jazz score by your colleague Antonio Sanchez. Does this give you hope that jazz’s death isn’t as imminent as feared?

A. I am not a huge fan of the whole idea of “genre” or styles of music kind of to start with, so I kind of don’t really feel any alignment with the ways it gets described. To me, music is one big universal thing. The musicians who I have admired the most are the ones who have a deep reservoir of knowledge and insight not just about music, but about life in general and are able to illuminate the things that they love in sound. When it is a musician who can do that on the spot, as an improviser, that is usually my favorite kind of player.

I feel like I am a musician in this broad sense first. And all the subsets of the way music often gets talked about in terms of the words people use to describe music is basically just a cultural/political discussion that I have found that I am really not that interested in in the same way I am interested in the spirit and sound of music itself.

And as far as that culture goes, I don’t really worry too much about it. The only currency for me that has any truth attached to it is music itself and I feel lucky that I have been able to spend most of my waking hours trying to respond to the amazingly high standards that music demands. How the culture at large responds or doesn’t respond is superfluous to that pursuit. Anyone who spends much time worrying about that is missing the point of what music truly offers us.

Q. It’s been a few years since we’ve seen you in Spokane. When you’re here, what can your fans expect?

A. This is unusual for me. I have actually never done anything like this before, where I come out to play with a band like this playing as a soloist. I don’t really know what to expect – which is part of the attraction of doing it for me.

Q. When you were here last, you were here with the Unity Band. Do you plan to work with that group again?

A. Definitely. Everyone in that group has lots of things going on, but we really had a great time together. I am sure at some point we will all find time to share the bandstand again.

Q. “The Unity Sessions” is just out on Blu-ray, and it’s a live show recorded not in front of an audience. Are you happy with how that experiment worked out?

A. I actually did the same type of thing at the end of the “Orchestrion” tour. I think it is a great way to document something. It is kind of hybrid situation, somewhere between a live gig and a studio situation. The thing of filming a live concert is almost a cliche thing at this point. We have all seen so many of those. By doing it the way we did it for “The Unity Session,” we didn’t have to play pretend – we were playing directly for the person sitting at home watching the DVD with no one in between. It is more real that way for me. The intention is clear. And I am so glad we capture that band in that state.

Q. You’re someone who has always blurred the lines between jazz, rock, country, whatever. Is there another genre out there you’re interested in playing around with?

A. It is all the same to me. I am pretty happy to play in a really dense way, or a really sparse way, or really loud or really soft or all over the dynamic range, really inside the chords or outside the chords…it kind of doesn’t matter too much for me – it is whatever seems to sound best for what is happening at that particular moment. But I never ever am thinking about “what style is this?” I just play like I am listening to the music and I try to play what I might like to hear right then more as a fan of music that as a player.

Q. You’ve had to say goodbye to a few friends, mentors and collaborators in recent years, guys like Charlie Haden, Clark Terry and Ornette Coleman. Does it feel odd to finally be an “old man” of jazz, after so many years of being the whiz kid? (Not that you’re old or anything …)

A. The question came up recently whether I was chronologically the “last old guy” or the “first new guy” … it is an interesting question. (Probably it is more the former than the latter.)

Q. Is there a jazz song out there that you wish you’d written?

A. Still working on it.