PAT METHENY’S  illustrious career spans over 40 albums and he’s the only artist to be awarded Grammys in 12 different categories including for rock, contemporary jazz recording, jazz instrumental solo and composition.

Pushing technology to new frontiers has long been core to his approach, with his 2010 album Orchestrion developing ensemble-orientated music using mechanically controlled acoustic and acoustoelectric musical instruments.

His new work continues to cross boundaries between genres, unveiling new facets of an already expansive personal language.

Album opener Four Paths to Light, for solo guitar, is performed brilliantly by classical guitarist Jason Vieaux. Busy melodic lines arch around an almost percussive approach before calm sets in to slower tempos and more delicate lines.

Deceptively simple, but soulfully interpreted, the centrepiece of the album is the six-movement Road To The Sun, performed by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, who Metheny describes as “one of the best bands in the world.”

They perform on three conventional guitars plus a seven-string instrument with an additional bass range and the composition contains flowing arpeggios, intricate melodic development, driving rhythms, strict tempo delivery and a strong flamenco influence. It evokes a crystal-like architecture or a series of American landscapes.

And it has the structural integrity of serious classical composition, almost a modern equivalent of a Strauss tone-poem.

But the language is very much Metheny, with his unique harmonic approach ever present.

It’s a kind of optimistic romantic nomadic jazz rubbing shoulders with classical fusion Americana in a melancholic search for cultural identity.      

The last track is a cover of Arvo Part’s Fur Alina, performed by Metheny. After all the structural complexities, modulations and key changes of what’s gone before, an atmospheric and haunting diatonic quality emerges.

Metheny performed the piece on a Picasso 42-string acoustic guitar. Named because of its three curiously arranged necks and two sound holes, making it look like a cubist interpretation of a guitar. Its sonic signature ranges from deep resonant bass notes to bright ringing tones reminiscent of a zither with an overall ethereal approach.

Its sonic signature ranges from deep resonant bass notes to bright ringing tones reminiscent of a zither, creating an overall ethereal approach.

Recording and production values are exceptionally high, with all the warmth of a analogue approach at the lower frequencies spectrum combined with upper-frequency digital detailed gloss.

Metheny has still much territory to explore, especially in possible new radical sonic journeys combining classical with high-tech electronic dance music and yet to be invented technologies.    

Released by Modern Recordings/BMG.