Lyle Mays

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lyle Mays (2016)

Lyle David Mays (born November 27, 1953 in Wausaukee , Wisconsin , † February 10, 2020 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American jazz and fusion musician , arranger and composer . He played piano and keyboard and was a co-founder and member of the Pat Metheny Group for 27 years . Metheny and Mays composed and arranged almost all of the music for the group, for which Mays won eleven Grammy Awards.

biography

Lyle Mays was born in Wisconsin in 1953, the oldest of three children. His mother played the piano in church services, his father the guitar . During his childhood, Mays had four main interests: chess, math, architecture and music. At the age of 14 he accompanied the church singing on the organ . Musical summer camps brought him together with Rich Matteson , who got him enthusiastic about jazz . When he was 17, he went to North Texas State University , known for the wide jam session space it lets its students. There he developed into a pianist, keyboardist, arranger and composer. He contributed all of the compositions (with the exception of a Chick Corea title) and arrangements for the One O'Clock Lab Band's Lab '75 album, which was proposed for a Grammy .

In 1975 he met the guitarist Pat Metheny , with whom he acted on an equal footing and, after working for Woody Herman, founded the Pat Metheny Group in 1978 . This became one of the most successful jazz formations of the 1980s and 1990s and was active until 2005. In 2010 Mays gave several concerts in Europe with the Pat Metheny Group as part of the Songbook Tour .

Independently from Metheny, Mays also worked for Paul McCandless , Eberhard Weber , Bob Moses , Rickie Lee Jones and Joni Mitchell . From 1986 he presented several albums under his own name. During the last years of his life he worked as a software manager.

Mays died in February 2020 at the age of 66 after a long illness.

plant

In the Pat Metheny Group, Lyle Mays worked closely with Pat Metheny on the composition and arrangement of the pieces, with his complex harmonies helping to determine the character of the recordings. He also wrote the international hit This Is Not America (sung by David Bowie ) with Metheny .

Only five albums were created under his own name, all of which were dedicated to classical jazz rock . These include the recordings Lyle Mays and Street Dreams , which continue the work with the Pat Metheny Group in terms of sound and theme. The album Fictionary is a classic jazz trio recording with Marc Johnson on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. The Ludwigsburg Concert was only released in 2016 , a concert recording from 1993, on which Mays can be heard in a purely acoustic quartet (Lyle Mays: Piano, Bob Sheppard : Sax, Marc Johnson: Bass, Mark Walker : Drums).

Solo: Improvisations for Expanded Piano is improvised piano music; Electronic sound generators were controlled via the piano. This technique can also be observed in the concerts of the Pat Metheny Group , where Mays sometimes only implemented the complex arrangements and sound structures while sitting at the grand piano. He also recorded music for children, such as the English story Tale of Peter Rabbit read by Meryl Streep .

Discography (excerpt)

under his own name
  • Lyle Mays (Geffen 1986)
  • Street Dreams (Geffen 1988)
  • Fictionary (Geffen 1993)
  • Solo (Warner Brothers 2000)
  • The Ludwigsburg Concert ( Jazzhaus , ed. 2016)
Pat Metheny & Lyle Mays
Pat Metheny Group
  • Watercolors , 1977, ECM
  • Pat Metheny Group , 1978, ECM
  • American Garage , 1980, ECM
  • Offramp , 1982, ECM
  • Travels , 1983, ECM
  • First Circle , 1984, ECM
  • The Falcon and the Snowman (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) , 1985, EMI
  • Still Life (Talking) , 1987, Geffen
  • Letter From Home , 1989, Geffen
  • The Road to You , 1993, Geffen
  • We Live Here , 1995, Geffen
  • Quartet , 1996, Geffen
  • Imaginary Day , 1997, WB
  • Speaking of Now , 2002, WB
  • The Way Up, 2005 , Nonesuch
Further
  • The Debussy Trio: In the Shadow of a Miracle (Sierra Classical, 1996; with Jan Bach, Andrew Frank, Angela Wiegand, Marcia Dickstein, Keith Green)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Noted jazz keyboardist Lyle Mays dies at 66th WTMJ, February 11, 2020, accessed on February 11, 2020 (English).
  2. ^ Lyle Mays | Division of Jazz Studies. November 22, 2016, accessed April 20, 2020 .
  3. ↑ a b Lyle Mays. Retrieved February 12, 2020 .
  4. ^ Lyle Mays | UNT Division of Jazz Studies. June 26, 2010, accessed February 12, 2020 .
  5. ↑ a b Michael Rüsenberg : Lyle Mays 1953-2020. In: jazzcity.de. Retrieved February 17, 2020 .
  6. ↑ dreamstime.com: Editorial Image: Pat Metheny Group at Umbria Jazz Festival
  7. ^ Lyle Mays (interview). In: Jazzit . August 7, 2016, accessed February 17, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Composer and keyboardist Lyle Mays died at the age of 66. bonedo.de, February 11, 2020, accessed on February 11, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Including This Is Not America , feat. David Bowie
personal data
SURNAME Mays, Lyle
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mays, Lyle David (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz pianist, composer and fusion musician
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Wausaukee , Wisconsin
DATE OF DEATH February 10, 2020
Place of death los Angeles