Pat Metheny Unity Band: Debut Album Confirmed For Release
Monday, 30 April 2012 16:02
– Stephen Graham
Jazzwise can reveal the upcoming release of the debut album by the brand new Pat Metheny Unity Band. To be released in time for the summer tour, when European dates include the Barbican in London on 8 July, Unity Band is to be released on Nonesuch Records, who Metheny has a long relationship with, and follows on from last year’s Grammy winning solo album What’s It All About.
The Unity Band brings in some hot new talent chiefly Thelonious Monk Prize-winning bassist Ben Williams whose Concord records debut State of Art came out last year. Williams impressed at the London Jazz Festival in 2010 with Terence Blanchard’s storming band of the day and joins the great guitarist along with another new recruit in star saxophonist Chris Potter, recently in formidable form with his own band during Jazzwise To The Power Of 15 at Ronnie Scott's.
The Unity Band is completed by Metheny’s long time trio drummer Antonio Sánchez. Tracks are the initially quiet acoustic guitar-oriented opener ‘New Year’ decanting into a wonderful Potter ballad line; the Celtic rock infused ‘Roofdogs’; ‘Come and See’ opening with a big Pikasso guitar strum and unfolding into some Coltranian runs from Potter; ‘This Belongs To You’; ‘Leaving Town’; ‘Interval Waltz’; the fragile sounding ‘Signals (Orchestrion Sketch)'; big ballad ‘Then and Now’ and rousing closer ‘Breakdealer’.
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