At the kindly guitar legend Pat Metheny’s 2024 concert at the Lobero Theatre, one of countless visits to this hallowed hall over the decades, he was in something of an inward and backward-looking place. It was part of a solo guitar tour, with the guitarist taking a retrospective journey through his multi-chaptered career, in both musical and testimonial modes. As a seventy-something jazz icon,whose musical life has yielded many rewards since his emergence in the 1970s, Metheny has many stories to tell, in song and otherwise.
At his recent Lobero appearance last week, the context involved a different kind of story. This time, he was looking behind to some degree, but also in the present and future tense, joined by his nimble band of young players, Side-Eye III+. His new group, an update on the former Side-Eye ensemble, came bearing several new tunes from the fine new album, eponymously titled Side-Eye III+, representing the evolving, forward-momentum aspect of Metheny’s musical being.
As heard on record and onstage, there is clearly a strong, in-house empathy between the veteran, bushy-haired boss and the young charges — keyboardist Chris Fishman, drummer Joe Dyson, bassist Jermaine Paul, and Leonard Patton on percussion and vocals.