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The New Yorker recently referred to Pat Metheny as 'possibly the
most influential jazz guitarist of the past five decades.' A native
of Lee's Summit, Missouri, just southeast of Kansas City, Metheny
started playing in pizza parlors at age fourteen. By the time he
graduated from high school he was the first-call guitarist for
Kansas City jazz clubs, private clubs, and jazz festivals. Now 66,
he attributes his early success to the local musical environment he
was brought up in and the players and teachers who nurtured his
talent and welcomed him into the jazz community. Metheny's twenty
Grammys in ten categories speak to his versatility and popularity.
Despite five decades of interviews, none have conveyed in detail
his stories about his teenage years. Beneath Missouri Skies also
reveals important details about jazz in Kansas City during the
sixties and early seventies, often overlooked in histories of
Kansas City jazz. Yet this time of cultural change was
characterized by an outstanding level of musicianship. Author
Carolyn Glenn Brewer shows how his keen sense of ensemble had its
genesis in his school band under the guidance of a beloved band
director. Drawn from news accounts, archival material, interviews,
and remembrances, to which the author had unique access, Beneath
Missouri Skies portrays a place and time from which Metheny still
draws inspiration and strength.
Selected as one of the Best Jazz Books of the Year (2021)
by The New York City Jazz Record The New Yorker
recently referred to Pat Metheny as “possibly the most
influential jazz guitarist of the past five decades.” A native of
Lee’s Summit, Missouri, just southeast of Kansas City, Metheny
started playing in pizza parlors at age fourteen. By the time he
graduated from high school he was the first-call guitarist for
Kansas City jazz clubs, private clubs, and jazz festivals. Now 66,
he attributes his early success to the local musical environment he
was brought up in and the players and teachers who nurtured his
talent and welcomed him into the jazz community. Metheny's twenty
Grammys in ten categories speak to his versatility and popularity.
Despite five decades of interviews, none have conveyed in detail
his stories about his teenage years. Beneath Missouri Skies also
reveals important details about jazz in Kansas City during the
sixties and early seventies, often overlooked in histories of
Kansas City jazz. Yet this time of cultural change was
characterized by an outstanding level of musicianship. Author
Carolyn Glenn Brewer shows how his keen sense of ensemble had its
genesis in his school band under the guidance of a beloved band
director. Drawn from news accounts, archival material, interviews,
and remembrances, to which the author had unique access, Beneath
Missouri Skies portrays a place and time from which Metheny still
draws inspiration and strength.
Even though the potential passage of the Equal Rights Amendment had
cracked glass ceilings across the country, in 1978 jazz remained a
boys' club. Two Kansas City women, Carol Comer and Dianne Gregg,
challenged that inequitable standard. With the support of jazz
luminaries Marian McPartland and Leonard Feather, inaugural
performances by Betty Carter, Mary Lou Williams, an unprecedented
All-Star band of women, Toshiko Akiyoshi's band, plus dozens of
Kansas City musicians and volunteers, a casual conversation between
two friends evolved into the annual Kansas City Women's Jazz
Festival (WJF). But with success came controversy. Anxious to
satisfy fans of all jazz styles, WJF alienated some purists. The
inclusion of male sidemen brought on protests. The egos of
established, seasoned players unexpectedly clashed with those of
newcomers. Undaunted, Comer, Gregg, and WJF's ensemble of
supporters continued the cause for eight years. They fought for
equality not with speeches but with swing, without protest signs
but with bebop. For the first book about this groundbreaking
festival, Carolyn Glenn Brewer interviewed dozens of people and
dove deeply into the archives. This book is an important testament
to the ability of two friends to emphatically prove jazz
genderless, thereby changing the course of jazz history.
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