The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet is set to debut a work written by Pat Metheny titled "Road to the Sun". Founding member William Kanengeiser explains.

10/17/2016

The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet is set to debut a work written by Pat Metheny titled "Road to the Sun". Founding member William Kanengeiser explains.

Los Angeles Guitar Quartet

Robert von Bernewitz – Does the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet have any new projects in the pipeline?

William Kanengeiser – Yes, one we’re really excited about right now. LAGQ is about to do the world premiere of a major new piece written for us by Pat Metheny. It’s called “Road to the Sun”, and it’s quite unprecedented in its scope and style. We met Pat in 2013 at a guitar festival in Montana. The last thing we expected one of our “guitar heroes” to say was "I'd like to write something for you guys". It took a while for him to carve out the time in his crazy touring schedule, but he finished it at the end of 2015. He told us that he was planning to write a fairly short piece,maybe 10 or 12 minutes. But when he started writing it, he said “it just poured out of me”. It ended up being a 25-minute, 6-movement suite, with almost symphonic proportions. It's such an honor to have a living legend write something just for us; even the parts are named “Bill”, “John”, “Matt” and “Scott”, not just Guitar 1,2,3,&4. It has some pretty serious extended harmonies and moody textures, but also some of his “Patented” Metheny grooves and melodies. When he was in LA recently we had the chance to work together, to show him what we were doing with it and get his advice on it. So cool for us! We’re premiering it at the University of Denver on October 20^th, and then again at the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara on October 28^th, and then at the 92^nd Street Y in New York City on November 5. He's going to be in the audience in Denver and New York, and we’ll do a pre-concert lecture with him.