Concert Review: Pat Metheny in Kansas City: The Genesis of Genius at Polsky Theatre

Advance promotional material for the Pat Metheny in Kansas City: The Genesis of Genius presentation at Polsky Theatre on Thursday, March 3, included the advisory “Pat Metheny will not be attending this event.”  The sadly unnecessary disclaimer underscored an unfortunate truth.  

Despite playing in more than four dozen American cities including Detroit during the past year, the hard-touring musician from nearby Lee’s Summit once again passed over the Kansas City area.  Metheny last performed within the city limits in 2012.  He subsequently played a poorly attended concert in Topeka in 2014.  

Forty people attended the free noontime event on Thursday.  The lecture by Carolyn Glenn Brewer, the author of the 2021 book Beneath Missouri Skies: Pat Metheny in Kansas City 1964-1972, was interspersed with performances of corresponding selections by guitarist Rob Whitsitt, bassist Tim Brewer and drummer Mike Warren.  

The trio played polite versions of compositions Brewer selected as particularly meaningful to Metheny’s development.  Images of album covers and black-and-white photographs accentuated the presentation.  While plainly not as fulfilling as an actual Metheny concert, the ambitious offering was a commendable consolation prize.

Set list: Seven Steps to Heaven, Unit 7, John McKee, Broadway Blues, Walter L., Bright Size Life

The Kansas City's Jazz Scene's Top Trends and Stories of 2021

1. Mask off

Kansas City never entirely embraced pandemic precautions.  Much of the populace treated official mandates as gratuitous suggestions.  Even so, Kansas City’s live music landscape shifted during the difficulties.  The good news is that new jazz-friendly venues replaced many of the rooms that didn’t survive.

2. Saying the quiet part out loud

Some readers of Plastic Sax are annoyed by this site’s penchant for disclosing disheartening attendance figures.  Pat Metheny acknowledged the town’s limited appetite for jazz in an interview with In Kansas City magazine.

3. Fiver

Many observers insist that the customary absence of cover charges at performances of jazz devalues the music.  Green Lady Lounge, Kansas City’s most popular jazz venue, instituted a five dollar admission fee this year.

4. Underground surge

Thanks largely to the initiatives of the enterprising young musicians Seth Davis and Evan Verploegh, avant-garde jazz and experimental music was much easier to find in 2021.

5. 3333

After relocating to 3333 Wyoming Street, the Charlotte Street Foundation became a welcoming home for left-of-center improvised music.

6. The beat goes on

The storied drummer Carl Allen replaced Bobby Watson as Endowed Chair of Jazz Studies at UMKC.  Much of the jazz scene’s fate rests on Allen’s ability to attract and develop promising talent.

7. Dunn good

Gerald Dunn, the person who has become the institutional memory of the American Jazz Museum and has long served as an essential component of Kansas City’s music scene, was named a Jazz Hero by the Jazz Journalists Association.

8. Missouri uncompromised

Carolyn Glenn Brewer’s new study Under Missouri Skies: Pat Metheny in Kansas City 1965-1972 provides essential insights into a previously under-documented era.

9. Next level

Hermon Mehari’s progression as a refined practitioner of European jazz and the ascension of Lucy Wijnands’ career were among the most notable artistic developments by artists associated with Kansas City.

10. Rest in peace

The passing of organ kingpin Everette DeVan was the most prominent of several heartbreaking deaths.

Confirmation: Weekly New and Notes

*The 2021 edition of the Prairie Village Jazz Festival has been canceled.  The lineup consisted of a band led by Adam Larson with Fabian Almazan and Jaleel Shaw, We the People, Back Alley Brass Band and the Shawnee Mission East Blue Knights.

*Carolyn Glenn Brewer attempted to promote her book Beneath Missouri Skies: Pat Metheny in Kansas City 1964-1972 on The Pitch’s Streetwise podcast.

*Pat Metheny was interviewed by the popular YouTube personality Rick Beato.

*Eboni Fondren chatted with Steve Kraske about Everette DeVan on KCUR’s Up To Date program.

*Joe Dimino added Trent Austin and Desmond Mason to his catalog of interviews.

*The Spotlight 2021: Charlie Parker initiative is featured in a brief television news segment.

*Tweet of the Week: The Twittah Sh*ttah- Green Lady Lounge, Kansas City. Cool jazz club. To be honest, I was pretty drunk at this place. I think the bathroom was a good one. All I got was two blurry photos and a video of this awesome sink that lights up when you turn it on. (video and photos)

Book Review: Carolyn Glenn Brewer- Beneath Missouri Skies: Pat Metheny in Kansas City 1964-1972

Pat Metheny’s 1976 debut album Bright Size Life is so magical that listeners would be forgiven for thinking the music materialized out of nowhere.  Carolyn Glenn Brewer’s illuminating new study Beneath Missouri Skies: Pat Metheny in Kansas City 1964-1972 provides a detailed accounting of the origins of the Lee’s Summit native’s sound.

Brewer, the author of the excellent Changing the Tune: The Kansas City Women’s Jazz Festival, 1978-1985, exhaustively traces Metheny’s formative musical endeavors.  Her story opens with The Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show and closes during the summer following Metheny’s graduation from high school.

Not only is Brewer a contemporary of Metheny, she was a fellow musician and sister of one of Metheny’s primary teen collaborators.  She bolsters her eyewitness impressions of many of the key events of Beneath Missouri Skies with extensive research and interviews.

Beneath Missouri Skies will delight Metheny enthusiasts eager to learn even the most minute details of his musical development, but it’s even more crucial as a history of a previously underdocumented era of jazz in Kansas City.  The scarcity of recordings and videos of the scene Brewer describes makes her work necessary.

The colorful antics of Gary Sivils, the business acumen of Warren Durrett and the influential theories of John Elliott loom large.  Musicians such as Herman Bell, Rod Fleeman, Russ Long, Bettye Miller, Dave Scott and Paul Smith also play key roles in Beneath Missouri Skies.  While she clearly has great personal and professional affection for her subjects, Brewer doesn’t romanticize the setting.

She recounts the demeaning musical compromises musicians were obligated to make at the majority of gigs in Kansas City.  Metheny and his colleagues were regularly compelled to cover shopworn pop hits like “Proud Mary.”  The inference that these artistic constraints would contribute to Metheny’s crossover success is among the multitude of insights provided by the invaluable Beneath Missouri Skies.