Word: haden
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When he was a child living in Manhattan while his father worked for the United Nations, the boy who was to become Britain's Fifth Baron Haden-Guest of Saling passed his happiest hours staring out his apartment window at the passing parade. He would imitate the funny walks he saw, improvising accents he imagined might match them...
When he was a child living in Manhattan while his father worked for the United Nations, the boy who was to become Britain's Fifth Baron Haden-Guest of Saling passed his happiest hours staring out his apartment window at the passing parade. He would imitate the funny walks he saw, improvise accents he imagined might match them...
...poignancy of Metheny's unique, gentle style reached its height in Beyond the Missouri Sky, his 1997 collaboration with bassist Charlie Haden. After such a tour-de-force, Metheny's latest album, Trio 99-00, is something of a disappointment. Metheny seems compelled on track after track to exhibit the Pagannini side of his guitar talents, going off on elaborate licks and solos. It's impressive, no doubt, but Metheny's heart isn't there. He comes to life not in the elaborate showmanship of a piece like "(Go) Get It" but in the more contemplative tracks like "Travels...
...label, however, meets with his wholehearted approval. Veteran bassist Charlie Haden, a longtime admirer and sometime collaborator (Rejoicing, Beyond the Missouri Sky), calls Metheny's music "contemporary impressionistic Americana." Asked to comment, the guitarist breaks out in a smile as wide as the Great Plains. "I like that one," he says. "I'll buy that...
Besides the quartet (pianist Alan Broadbent, drummer Larance Marable and tenor saxophonist Ernie Watts, along with Haden), there are guest vocalists on a few of the cuts (Shirley Horn and Bill Henderson) and a chamber orchestra on others. But it is Haden's spooky, unpolished vocal on Wayfaring Stranger, the closing track on this superb album, that provides a surprising but characteristically intrepid coda, a valedictory from a musical explorer who can find new territory anywhere he wanders...