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Lyle Mays
Background information
Born	November 27, 1953 (age 53) in Wausaukee Wisconsin, USA
Genre(s)	Jazz, Contemporary classical music
Occupation(s)	Musician Composer
Instrument(s)	Piano Organ Synthesizers
Years active	1975 –
Associated acts	Pat Metheny Group
Website	LyleMays.com

Lyle Mays (born November 27, 1953) is a jazz pianist. He is best known for his work with Pat Metheny as a member of the Pat Metheny Group.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Character of his work 3 Discography (selected) 4 Additional Reading 5 External links

Of his four dominant interests - in all of them being a child prodigy — chess, mathematics, architecture (building with LEGO bricks as a child) and music, the latter developed to be his area of focus. Being the son of musically interested parents - his mother played the piano in church, his father played guitar by ear - he soon was allowed to explore the piano with the help of a teacher, Rose Baron, who was open to letting the child, who had perfect pitch, improvise after the formal lesson. He soon was playing organ for the church.

At the suggestion of Dan Wheelock, his eighth grade band instructor, he attended summer camps where he met Rich Matteson who introduced him to important jazz artists. Bill Evans' album Live in Montreux was among his revelations. He attended University of North Texas for its inspiring environment of geeks avid to jam whenever and wherever possible. He composed and arranged for the One o'clock Lab Band and was the composer and arranger of their highly regarded Lab '75 album.

After leaving UNT, Mays toured with Woody Herman's group for about eight months.

In 1974 he met Pat Metheny with whom he founded the still-performing Pat Metheny Group, one of the most successful jazz bands ever. During that period he lived in New York City, so poor that he was "almost starving", but he continued to pursue his concept of music and artistry. Later, he moved back to rural Wisconsin where, among other activities, he coached an adolescent soccer team. He also flirted with the idea of moving to Brazil but finally - at the end of the 1990s - moved to Los Angeles which is "the opposite of so many cities".

Within the context of the Pat Metheny Group, he cooperates with Metheny in composition and provides arrangements, orchestration and - most remarkably - the complex harmonic and metric backbone of the group's musical signature.

His albums as a leader reflect a large variety of musical interests: Lyle Mays and Street Dreams expand the ideas of the Pat Metheny Group, while Fictionary is a straight-ahead jazz trio session featuring Marc Johnson on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. Solo: Improvisations for Expanded Piano is a curious album of spontaneous piano improvisations, laboriously edited.

He has also composed and recorded music for children's records, such as Tale of Peter Rabbit, with text read by Meryl Streep.

Following his talents and interests, Mays aspires to incorporate divergent elements: composition and improvisation, improvisation and orchestration, acoustic and electronic, old and new. He has spent a lot of time and energy in making use of synthesisers despite their "inherent unmusicality". Furthermore he composed classical music like "Twelve Days In The Shadow Of A Miracle", a piece for harp, flute, viola and synthesizer (recorded 1996 by the Debussy Trio).

As a pianist he manifests strong technique, flowing lyricism, and a supple touch; his solos are often described as developing from almost silence to cascades of sound, often strongly organized around a recurring motif or motifs, or a basic stylistic principle. This sort of playing reflects his compositional way of contrapuntal complexity, his concept of soloing as "real-time composition".

As a composer Mays is interested in the complex form, expanding the motifs and most often building suspense by gradation and ascension. Modulations and metric shifts are often incorporated.

Noting that his oeuvre as a leader is small, some critics evince frustration with this considerable talent (as manifested, for example, on Fictionary) lying fallow. Apparently Mays maintains interest in other intellectual occupations: architecture (he designed his sister's house), mathematics and logic (Hofstadter's book Gödel, Escher, Bach) and computer programming in C++.

Lyle Mays

• Solo, Warner Bros. 2000
• The Debussy Trio - In the Shadow of a Miracle, Sierra Classical, 1996
• Fictionary, Geffen 1993
• Street Dreams, Geffen, 1988
• Lyle Mays, Geffen, 1986

Pat Metheny Group

• The Way Up, 2005, Nonesuch
• Speaking of Now, 2002, WB
• Imaginary Day, 1997, WB
• Quartet, 1996, Geffen
• We Live Here, 1995, Geffen
• The Road to you, 1993, Geffen
• Letter From Home, 1989, Geffen
• Still Life (Talking), 1987, Geffen
• First Circle, 1984, ECM
• Travels, 1983, ECM
• Offramp, 1982, ECM
• As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls, 1981, ECM
• American Garage, 1980, ECM
• Pat Metheny Group, 1978, ECM
• Watercolors, 1977, ECM

• Music and Intellect - a portrait of Lyle Mays
• interview 1
• interview 2
• interview 3
• Lyle Mays: The compositional Process
• The Expanding Piano
• Song For Bilbao - a study of the diachronic development of Mays' soloing
• The Low Down On The Way Up - The making of The Way Up
• Up and Away - an interview with Lyle Mays about "The Way UP", the Pat Metheny Group record of 2005

• The most comprehensive discography of Lyle Mays
• List of any recorded compositions of Lyle Mays and Pat Metheny
• A live radio performance recorded December 4, 1999, featuring Lyle Mays with Bob Sheppard, Dave Carpenter, and Peter Erskine

Pat Metheny Group
Pat Metheny | Lyle Mays | Steve Rodby | Antonio Sanchez | Cuong Vu | Grégoire Maret | Nando Lauria
Mark Egan | Dan Gottlieb | Nana Vasconcelos | Pedro Aznar | Paul Wertico | Armando Marcal | David Blamires | Mark Ledford | Luis Conte | Richard Bona
Discography
Pat Metheny Group | American Garage | Offramp | Travels | First Circle | The Falcon and the Snowman | Still Life (Talking) | Letter from Home | The Road to You | We Live Here | Quartet | Imaginary Day | Speaking of Now | The Way Up