reviews / 1997

CHARLIE HADEN / PAT METHENY - Beyond The Missouri Sky (Short Stories)

1997 (Polydor)

jazz

by Valerio Torreggiani

In 1997, after years of various collaborations, Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden, united by their shared home turf, decided to create an album of memories and nostalgia, one whose authorship belongs equally to both musicians, since each contributes in equal measure, with his own sensitivity and craft, to making it a small masterpiece. The original idea called for a purely acoustic record, with no further additions; in the course of making it, however, the empty spaces left by the melodies were filled in with small studio touches, simple organ chords, basic percussive rhythms, or overdubbed guitar parts, always played by Pat Metheny.

The common thread running through the whole album is simplicity. Not only the improvised passages but the very compositional structure of each piece is minimal, and this inevitably brings to the fore the notes, the music, the genius of the two American musicians. Gratuitous, showy virtuosity is set aside to make room for careful note choices, to highlight the silences between a guitar phrase and a double bass passage. The pieces evoke a sense of peace and relaxation, and carry an enormous artistic power, almost therapeutic, I'd say: anyone spellbound by these notes makes peace with the world. Everything is shaped around tenderness, a melancholy tenderness: that of the musician's heart as he looks back, drawing up music from his childhood, in the endless expanses of the Midwest.

Charlie Haden's double bass, with its warm, enveloping, velvety tone, provides an ideal carpet for his partner's improvisational flights, while also carving out excellent solo space of its own. Here we find Pat Metheny in great form: the singing quality of his phrases, the well-known lyricism that made him famous even among non-jazz listeners, combined with tremendous emotional intensity, make the improvisations on this record a compositional peak rarely matched elsewhere.

Unlike other records, here Metheny abandons all electric and electronic gear to focus more on acoustic instruments, favoring clarity and transparency of tone. In his phrases and half-phrases there is always a call-and-response relationship, clearly descended from his mentor Jim Hall: it's precisely this ongoing dialogue between the various parts of the solo that makes Metheny's improvising so engaging and well-balanced, with its incredible ability to draw the listener in, cradle them, and carry them through to the end of the solo, without ever lapsing into mere saccharine "melodiousness," as so often happens with his many imitators.

A record to dream to, to sit back comfortably with, and forget the world's noise. A record that reminds us to fully enjoy art, music and life. Thoughts are free to wander among the notes of this masterpiece, lovingly watched over by the vast Missouri sky in the endless expanses of the Midwest. If God exists, he has surely cast a kindly eye on these tracks too.