Quote Originally Posted by 20to20K
The Pat Methany Group was the first jazz concert I ever saw. It was the First Circle tour at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan...1985 I think. My view of music has never been the same since. I currently own over 30 Pat CD's including a few bootleg concerts from Europe and has seen him live over a dozen times (most recently with the Trio band in Leeds, England in 2001) and he is my favorite living musician.
Ah! This means that you have not yet caught Antonio Sanchez. He's an absolutely phenomenal drummer, and adds all kinds of new rhythmic wrinkles to what the group does live. However, I will add that for the Gottlieb-Wertico era songs, Sanchez doesn't quite have the same intuitive "rightness" on the rhythm that Wertico had. But, on TWU, his style so perfectly fits that piece, it's scary.

The rest of the band is also very much up to the formidable task of playing TWU live. They were a step down from previous percussionists/multi-instrumentalists/vocalists on the older material, then again I'm not sure how well suited Pat's previous bands would have been to playing TWU. Seems like he writes his material around the strengths of his band members, and TWU is definitely a show of strengths for his current lineup. I read that when Pat brought Paul Wertico and Pedro Aznar into the group, their first concerts did not go very well. But, they also brought new abilities to the group, which set Pat and Lyle off in new directions when they wrote First Circle.

Quote Originally Posted by 20to20K
Needless to say I am quite anxious to see his live rendition of "This Way up" as he comes to the Lisner Auditorium in DC in a couple weeks. At first listen I was not blown away by this release...I liked it OK, but did not think it was one of his best. By the 3rd or 4th listen it started blowing me away. Now It's my 4th favorite Pat album behind Still Live Talking, Pat Methany Group, and ...As Falls Witchita.
I've pretty much had the exact same impression with pretty much every PMG album since Offramp. (Except for maybe Letter From Home, which I liked from the very beginning, and Speaking of Now, which I'm still not too hot on) Not too thrilled at first, but on third or fourth listening I start to like it. And then when I see it performed live, the light bulb clicks on, and I'm listening to it day and night for the next few months.

Quote Originally Posted by 20to20K
I'm hoping that they recording the live concert tour to make into a DVD. Pat's albums have always had outstanding sound as most of his CD's were recorded on the acoustically conscious ECM label so I'm sure the 5.1 live mix would be outstandings sonically. I still need to the get the Speaking of Now DVD-Audio.
Keeping the fingers crossed on the DVD because that will be the only way to see TWU performed in its entirety after this tour!

Not sure if the sound quality has to do with the label (Pat hasn't recorded for ECM since First Circle), but he has worked with the same production team for quite a while and they also supervise the multichannel versions.

If you're looking for DVD-Audio, the only album that he's released in a multichannel mix is the DVD-A version of Imaginary Day, which is probably the PMG album best suited for a 5.1 mix. The instrumental sounds (percussion in particular), ambient effects, and guitar sounds are all cued around the channels so that they create very deliberate spatial effects. Very well done, and a great intro to what multichannel music is capable of. It definitely adds to the listening experience compared to the two-channel version.

I also highly recommend the Speaking of Now concert DVD (it's a DVD-V disc, not DVD-A). It's a great performance, but also a phenomenal recording with the DTS version. Very interesting way that they produced this one because it was done as a 4.1 mix with no center channel active. There's a pretty active debate right now among recording engineers about the merits of using center channels with multichannel music. For a live recording like this one, going without the center channel seems to make the sound more open and akin to being inside a concert hall. On the other hand, the center channel on the DVD-A version of Imaginary Day is used to great effect by anchoring the guitar sound into the middle when it's appropriate, and then switching it off to create a more deliberate spatial effect.