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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—Eleanore Kendall Pettersen (b. 1916)
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“To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)