Music And Intellect - A Portrait Of Musician Lyle Mays

Artist Interview by: Unknown User

The Co-Author

The Pat Metheny Group, which is actually touring after having taken a break for four years, is not only one of the longest existing but also one of the most successful existing jazz groups ever. It is distinguished by not having lost its identity as a result of popularity. Some have concluded that the group's success points at an inferior concept, a low profile music, but whenever these critics are asked just to count the beat of a randomly chosen piece of the group's repertoire the metric complexity immediately becomes obvious – practically no one else has succeeded in this. The same is true for the compositional density, contrapuntal games and orchestral arrangements – they are easy to listen to, but hard to analyze. In some way the Pat Metheny Group is the continuation of the symphonic big band tradition with other, more modern, means, and thus the question about the essence of the group continuously arises. The fundamental share of composer, pianist, keyboard player and arranger Lyle Mays in the character of the Pat Metheny Group's music is no secret and makes interesting a view on the man next to Pat Metheny.

Lyle Mays has always been called Pat Metheny’s Alter Ego, just as Billy Strayhorn was called Ellington's Alter Ego. Well, Lyle Mays can not be called an attribute to Pat Metheny – this is what an alter ego means - their characters are too profoundly different. Maybe one could talk more appropriately about Alexander and Hamlet – here the medial, charismatic Frontman, who takes the fans’ hearts in a storm, there the intellectual Lyle Mays, measuring the depth of music and its tradition, who does not limit his explorations about what art essentially is merely to music. For Mays the popular success counts little compared to the realization of his artistic aspirations. This becomes obvious when Mays comments on a live recording where the crowd of a Neapolitan Stadium sang the melody of his and Metheny’s piece Minuano – a dream for any serious musician. Not so Lyle Mays “it's not a bad thing to be adored, but it's so often for the wrong reasons that it ultimately means nothing”. Or: “ I wasn't half as nervous when I played for a crowd of 125,000 in Montreal as I had been on the groundbreaking of my sister's house” that he, in his role as architect, had designed. So, who is this intellectual who belongs to those artists whose interests are so diverse and who stand increasingly against the current Zeitgeist?

The High Potential Kid

Lyle Mays was born 1952 and raised in rural Wisconsin. The next village of less than 500 inhabitants was some 15 miles away and there were accordingly few cultural events. Nevertheless – or even as a consequence – music played an important role in the home of the Mays' family. His father played guitar by ear and his mother accompanied the church choir on the piano. Lyle's extensive talents became quickly obvious, some traits in his childhood remind of Adrian Leverkühn in Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus. “I feel the parallel to Adrian in Faustus in that it took little to no effort for me to learn anything I cared to in the musical realm and often have had the experience of success on the first attempt”.

Soon it turned out that he had perfect pitch : “When I was in college, a professor of acoustics tried to make a point to the class by proving what we "couldn't" hear. He banged two tuning forks (one at 440 and one at 441) and asked us what the difference was. I replied that the 2nd was sharp to the 1st and ruined his lecture”. Still further talents became evident. For the display of a local toy shop Lyle built scenes of Lego bricks, a material that he still uses to express his architectural fantasies. He was also responsible for demonstrating mathematical proofs to the class on the blackboard, especially after it turned out that the teacher was not able to do this. To this day he likes to learn a language like C++ for the fun of programming. Becoming a musician was not an act of will for Mays, “ I didn't choose to become a musician, there was no act of will. Of the four corners of my interest's quadrangle, I demonstrated more talent in music than the others. I was interested in all four, but the world paid much more attention to me for my musical accomplishments.” Soon it was he who was the church organist. His first piano teacher had a large influence on this development in that she let him explore new territories instead of making him practise technique.

The Improviser

Soon this education proved to be the right way: whenever his piano playing gets assessed today, the first comments deal with the extremely differentiated touch and the stupefying technique, reminiscent of eccentric Canadian Bach pianist Glenn Gould, a connection that appeared so natural to one of Gould's sound engineers that he gave young Mays the score of a Beethoven sonata with Gould’s handwritten notes.

“This touch, this technique has developed rather by accident. If there is a reason to it, then it is a consequence of my compositional thinking. During a certain passage for instances I think horns and celli in my left and flutes and clarinets in my right hand” and this makes Mays find his differentiated expression in playing. One of the most beautiful examples is Fictionary, the album that Mays recorded 1992 with drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Marc Johnson.

Any piano trio inevitably gets compared to Keith Jarrett's trio, but exactly this comparison reveals the fundamental differences: Mays' complex compositional approach makes him rather a poet as opposed to novelist Keith Jarrett, and just like in the poetic art, where the recombination of elements creates meaning, the trio around Mays is an equal triangle of piano, bass and drums, instead of – in Jarrett's case - an uplifted arrow, with bass and drums rather providing support.

This coherent compositional approach shines through the concept of his improvisations, which he prefers to call “realtime compositions”. A typical description of his breathtaking soli accounts for a gradation that starts from almost silence and develops to true cascades of sound that never fail to resolve into a climax and are always of the highest emotion. “I don't start things because I know how they will turn out, and if I make the outcome seem inevitable then who will believe I didn't plan it?” says Mays about his improvising, “I don't write my stories from the end, but I love it when I can work my way to an end that implies that”

This “working” his way through the composition marks his attitude towards compositions in general. No composer works in a vacuum and accordingly studies of composition and the related history have a prominent place in Mays' activities. Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler, Debussy and Bartok are – among many others – points of reference for him in the musical language. An expression of these classical studies are his own contemporary compositions, like the piece Twelve Days In The Shadow Of A Miracle for harp, flute, viola and synthesizer (recorded 1996 by the Debussy Trio), which develops its lyrical ideas in twelve sets, following and recombining them or letting them go adrift and disappear.

The Composer

The same way Mays looks back in terms of composition he looks ahead in terms of technology: “I have given many interviews where I decry the limitations of synthesizers and their inherent unmusicality” says Mays. On the other hand: “I've been reluctant to do a solo piano record for my entire adult life, because I didn't consider myself a piano player in that sense. I've always focused my energies on developing this hybrid instrument: the acoustic piano in combination with synths.” The solution came in form of the MIDI Grand Piano when Mays recorded his 1998 album SOLO – Improvisations for Expanded Piano. This is an instrument that records not only conventional sound production but also the associated sound data, which were used by Mays to process an after the fact orchestration. Mays : "It was also consistent with my interests, and it was a way to explore the many dichotomies in my life: composition vs. improvisation, improvisation versus orchestration, acoustic versus electronic, old versus new.”

Mays proceeds frequently in this spirit when he fuses different harmonic concepts to a genuine new whole. The piece Chorinho on the 1988 album Street Dreams, for instance, follows the texture of a Bach like triosonata in bass and lead parts while the middle/harmony part accompanies in the manner of a Brazilian dance, a Chorinho. These elements, woven into a genuinely western jazz form, make it a swinging piece where the whole is a lot more than its parts.

Composing jointly in the Pat Metheny Group

The unmistakable character of the Pat Metheny Group is due to this intellectual element together with Metheny's rather melody orientated approach. The result, an entirely comprehensive and coherent musical concept, makes one easily forget about the diversity of the musician's characters and the accompanying difficulties in the process of mutual composing.

“The 'willing' part is hard for a composer. There is a natural control instinct when one composes. At least for me, I imagine all the parts, the players playing them, how the various parts and sections will fit together. After a certain point, it's very hard to imagine changing the least little thing let alone major passages. I assume it's somewhat the same way for Pat although it's surprising that we've never talked about this issue very deeply. So when either of us offers the other the opportunity to comment on, suggest changes, or contribute major new ideas, it's quite a remarkable act of will. It goes against all emotions, and it's hard to handle”.

Listening to the latest album Speak of Now these conflicts are not recognizable. It is music of one mould, even when it invites the listener to get lost in the diversity and refinement of the pieces. The Gathering Sky is a true little drama in five acts which was brought in to the recording session by Mays in June of the past year. An exposition about a peaceful, sunny, theme, reminiscent of African music, leads to a metrically powerful and propelling recapitulation in the form of a guitar solo, which develops into the third act, a drum solo accompanied by staccato orchestral sounds, from there morphs into a symphonic part, that brings the plot on the brink of catastrophe to a standstill, in order to revive and return from this most remote point into the concluding fifth act by way of a grandiose accelerando back to the initial theme, which now, after the catharsis, sounds sweeter than ever.

Hamlet and Alexander - what an amazing couple.

Discography (selected):

Lyle Mays
Lyle Mays, Geffen, 1986
Street Dreams, Geffen, 1988
Fictionary, Geffen 1993
Solo, Warner Brothers 2000
The Debussy Trio – In the Shadow of a Miracle, Sierra Classical, 1996

Pat Metheny Group
Imaginary Day, 1997, WB
Quartet, 1996, Geffen
We Live Here, 1995, Geffen
The Road to you, 1993, Geffen
Letter From Home, 1989, Geffen
Life (Talking), 1987, Geffen
First Circle, 1984, ECM
Travels, 1983, ECM
Offramp, 1982, ECM
As Falls Wichita, so falls Wichita Falls, 1981, ECM
American Garage, 1980, ECM
Pat Metheny Group, 1978, ECM
Watercolors, 1977, ECM

Anzahl Wörter: 1947

For more information: http://www.patmethenygroup.com/

Photo by: © Courtesy of Warner Bros. Records

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