Sep 22, 2026 12:26 PM
Hyde Park Jazz Fest on Chicago’s South Side to Present 20th Edition
The Hyde Park Jazz Festival will take place for the 20th time on the final weekend of September 2026. Beginning half…
The Pat Metheny Unity Group will release The Unity Sessions, one of two new albums from the guitarist on Nonesuch Records, on May 6
(Photo: Jimmy Katz ©2013 Pat Metheny Tours)Coming off a banner year that included a stint as artist-in-residence for the Detroit Jazz Festival, guitarist Pat Metheny will release two new albums that place him in the dual roles of leader and sideman. Nonesuch Records will release The Unity Sessions and Cuong Vu Meets Pat Metheny on May 6.
Both albums feature collaborators and colleagues with whom the 61-year-old Grammy-winning guitarist has worked for years. The Unity Sessions is taken from a filmed performance with the Pat Metheny Unity Group (drummer Anonio Sanchez, saxophonist Chris Potter, bassist Ben Williams, multi-instrumentalist Giulio Carmassi) that was recently released on DVD. The set comprises 13 songs by Metheny, including one he co-wrote with Ornette Coleman, and a well-known standard by Ray Noble.
The group’s first record, Kin (←→) (Nonesuch), was voted Jazz Album of the Year in the 2014 DownBeat Readers Pol.
On Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny, the guitarist joins a trio led by longtime Pat Metheny Group trumpeter Cuong Vu. (Other members of the trio include Stomu Takeishi on bass and Ted Poor on drums.) The album consists of five tunes written by Vu plus one by Metheny and one by Andrew D’Angelo.
Pre-orders of The Unity Sessions and Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny are available now at iTunes and nonesuch.com, each with an instant download of a track from its album (“This Belongs to You” and “Let’s Get Back,” respectively).
A solo concert by saxophonist Joshua Redman will close the first night of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival on Sept. 26.
Sep 22, 2026 12:26 PM
The Hyde Park Jazz Festival will take place for the 20th time on the final weekend of September 2026. Beginning half…
“It was just that suddenly … I could hear it,” Ravi Coltrane said of an epiphany he experienced during his late teens regarding his father’s music. “And it was almost like a calling, like something saying, ‘Hey, man, come on. It’s time to get serious.’ And the first time you really tune in and dial in and focus like that, it can be very life-changing.”
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Editor’s Note: Tomorrow, Sept. 23, is the 100th anniversary of John Coltrane’s birth. In honor of the tenor and…
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It began in 2001. A travel agent named Anita E. Berry had been booking clients on “partial” jazz cruises that took…
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