7#q     ..\\\\ f ppPx\ *9 98 WHO: Pat Metheny Group WHERE: Bijou Theatre WHEN: Monday, January 30, 8pm HOW MUCH: Call 656-4444 for ticket information by Chris Barrett Jazz. What the hell is jazz? Or, as some have asked lately, what was jazz? According to the tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp, jazz died with Coltrane. Wynton Marsalis, whose main gig these days is as music director of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, our national tax-funded keeper of the flame, doesn't seem to find any record of a pulse later than the 50s. The charts he puts on the Lincoln Center's music stands draw primarily from the early career of Duke Ellington and Ellington's contemporaries. Guitarist Pat Metheny, who's touring with a band for the first time in a half dozen years, looks at the Pat Metheny Group as if it were a big band, similar to the LCJO. But for Metheny, jazz is not a mournful ear bent toward the past. For him jazz is here and now. "You're never going to find any two people who agree on what jazz is these days," says Metheny. "Now it's a big controversy. "For me, music that exists to support improvising musicians is a close enough definition, and the main focus of what we do is improvisation. I want to live in this time. I don't want to pretend that it's 1960 anymore. The 60s is my favorite jazz period, actually, but you can't go back. It's hard for me to find a piece of repertory musiceven a piece that I wrotethat has the same power it had when it was created. It may be intellectually stimulating. It may be fascinating as far as form. But to truly illuminate a moment in time, I think it takes an improvising musician and music that is of that moment." The decision to remain contemporary would pose problems for any person who aspired to a sustained career in music. Remember disco? There are more than a handful of dusty dance 12-inches on the Blue Note jazz label that could prompt blushing from their creators. Metheny's been composing, recording and performing for some 20 years now. If you pulled into a music store and laid down your Visa for every disc with Metheny's name on it, it would take you and a strong-backed clerk two trips to get them all to your car. Still, his early recordings on ECM are of a piece with We Live Here (Geffen), his newest, out next month. Looking back at Metheny's work in the 70s, you can tell that he knew where he was going. Listening to We Live Here, you can tell that he is also that rare musician who listens to his own records. The thread that connects them all is discernible. Hes found a sound thats popular and comes easily to him. Detractors have said hes stuck in something of a rut. In the lingo of the genre, hes found his groove. (The winking consensus of those who knew them is that Coltrane named his now classic vamp Miles Groove in order to subtly tell his colleague he ought to be moving on to bigger and better things.) "There are musicians who reinvent themselves every time out," says Metheny. "I think you can find connections between each of the things I've done, to the point that my music is kind of one big, long record. I do like to keep each record so that it's about a specific subject, though. "A real hero of mine is the painter Paul Klee. He used an incredible variety of materials and did all kinds of different things stylistically. But there was something that connected all of his work." What connects Metheny's maturing body of work is his touch on his instrument, the constant motion in his playing. He's mastered the tone that neither starts nor stops, but simply leads to another. Fortunately, Metheny is tall enough artistically to stand in a groove and still see whats going on beyond it. The two most recent "cuts" on his "one big album" are as different as night and day, but related by his unique connection with his instrument. Last year's Zero Tolerance for Silence landed like the flaming shard of a guitar comet from another solar system. It's a solo guitar recording, overdubbed at times, that smacks the face of anyone who thought they'd heard all a guitar was capable of. It's free jazz flirting with the Japanese noise movement on its way to a date with rock-and-roll. By contrast, We Live Here is calmly beautiful, played by a well-oiled, fairly traditional combo. The guitar on both records is the same guitar (the one Metheny's played since he was 14) and there is never any question that it's been set in motion by the same mind and fingers. "I try not to divide things up by style," Metheny says. "Obviously, the vocabularies on those two records, and other things I've done, are different. If it were a language, they'd use different words, different tenses, or whatever. It's not so much the surface level of music that matters, as it is what happens underneath, what's represented. "I'm pretty much just trying to find the good notes, and to play well. Most of my daily activities are spent fighting the gravity of sucking," he adds with a chuckle. "It's pretty easy to suck, no matter who you are. "Time will tell what's the real deal and what's not." u p> 8 ?p?{<  ? ~~?`O9 ~7s >? K Wak @@.L{|ry I f.Rg!!! !!!!!  NJ   !    2 +,*`"""R"S"""###### # # # # ############## #!#"###$#%#&#'&:&?&@&C)L)M****3!3"3#3$3%3&3'3?3@3A3B3333333338888888888888889 9 9 9 9'9(9)9*9+9,9-9.98999:9;9z9999999999999999999999999999999999:T:e:f:g:h:i:j:k:l:u:v:w:x:y:z:{:|::::::::::::::;QHP(HPP  '=/R@P-:LaserWriter 8 New YorkUUUEE8MUSIC/INTERVIEW/PAT/5.1 Jophus Scone Jophus Scone