Work
In the Pat Metheny Group, Mays provides arrangements, orchestration and the harmonic and metric backbone of the group's musical signature. He occasionally performs on electric guitar as well. On the song Forward March, from the Pat Metheny Group album First Circle (1984), and in the concert tour for that album, he played trumpet.
His albums as a leader reflect a large variety of musical interests: Lyle Mays and Street Dreams build on the content of the Pat Metheny Group, while Fictionary is a straight-ahead jazz trio session featuring fellow North Texan Marc Johnson on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. Solo: Improvisations for Expanded Piano is focused on solo piano improvisations.
He has also composed and recorded music for children's records, such as Tale of Peter Rabbit, with text read by Meryl Streep.
The Steppenwolf Theater Company of Chicago featured an assortment of compositions by Lyle Mays and Pat Metheny for their production of Lyle Kessler's play Orphans.
He has composed classical music such as "Twelve Days in the Shadow of a Miracle", a piece for harp, flute, viola and synthesizer (recorded 1996 by the Debussy Trio).
Read more about this topic: Lyle Mays
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“Dear Felix, I have found some work for you. First of all we must have an eye-to-eye monologue and get things settled.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Then, bringing me the joy we feel when wee see a work by our favorite painter which differs from any other that we know, or if we are led before a painting of which we have until then only seen a pencil sketch, if a musical piece heard only on the piano appears before us clothed in the colors of the orchestra, my grandfather called me the [hawthorn] hedge at Tansonville, saying, “You who are so fond of hawthorns, look at this pink thorn, isn’t it lovely?””
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“... idleness is an evil. I don’t think man can maintain his balance or sanity in idleness. Human beings must work to create some coherence. You do it only through work and through love. And you can only count on work.”
—Barbara Terwilliger (b. c. 1940)