Pat Metheny

A brilliant guitarist who shook up the jazz world in the 1970s and 1980s, Pat Metheny fused the genre with rock, folk and electronic pop sounds to create the symphonic, instrumental soundscapes that have won him 18 Grammy Awards to date. Picking up the guitar at 12, Metheny began teaching music at the University of Miami aged just 18, before striking up a relationship with his hero, famous guitarist Gary Burton, who offered him a place in his band and a job at Berklee College of Music. Debut Bright Size Life (1976) soon caused waves in the jazz world for its experimental, modernity, but it was as the band Pat Metheny Group that he produced the classic albums Offramp (1983), Still Life (Talking) (1987) and Letter From Home (1989), and achieved great commercial success. The first jazz artist to use synthesizers and electronics, he went on to dabble in Latino, folk and classical music, collaborate with Joni Mitchell, Herbie Hancock and David Bowie and help design a new range of instruments, including his trademark custom made, 42-string, Pikasso harp guitar. Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore claimed that Metheny's album Zero Tolerance for Silence (1994) was "the most radical recording of this decade... a new milestone in electric guitar playing..." and The Orb sampled his composition Electric Counterpoint for their hit Little Fluffy Clouds. But it is as a revolutionary, improvisational jazz guitarist and experimental composer that he is most acclaimed.