Pat Metheny: The Orchestrion Project Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

Pat Metheny: The Orchestrion Project Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 16, 2012

Due to some serious (and thankfully short lived) overachievement and some equally unexpected high qualifying test scores, I managed to enter college just a couple credits shy of being a Junior, when I was only 17. I wanted to get through college as quickly as possible (stupid kid that I was), and of course at that age thought I knew everything anyway, so a lot of my college career remains a mad blur of half remembered classes and projects. But one moment in my Jazz Theory class is emblazoned upon my mind as if it were yesterday. My teacher, an alum of North Texas’ vaunted jazz program (and a guy who was then regularly churning out charts for the likes of The Tonight Show) sat me down and had me listen to another North Texas alum whom I had never heard of. The amazing song my teacher played for me that day was the deliciously titled “The Adventures of Supertonic” (you music theory geeks are no doubt laughing) and the player was one Lyle Mays. I may therefore be one of the few people who was originally drawn to Pat Metheny’s albums because I recognized Mays’ name as his keyboard player, co-composer and very frequent collaborator.

Mays and Metheny have developed the sort of simpatico that defines jazz, and I’m absolutely positive their many albums together will be appreciated as classics long after all of us have shuffled off this mortal coil. Metheny in fact seems to be an artist able to collaborate with just about anybody, however. He manages to flirt with so many different styles and genres that it wouldn’t be hard to imagine him sitting in with everyone from ZZ Top to John Adams. But Metheny’s Orchestrion Project is a signal example of one guy doing it all. Metheny, who grew up being fascinated by his grandfather’s player piano, has long nurtured an interest (some would say an obsession) in mechanically operated instruments, and that is the focus of this fascinating group of songs. This kind of Brazil- esque retro-futuristic assortment of instruments is at once archaic and cutting edge. I’ve long utilized the analogy of player piano rolls to MIDI files, attempting to get my students and ensemble members to realize that MIDI data, just like player piano rolls, holds no intrinsic musical information itself, but is simply a vehicle telling something else what to do. That same idea is what propels the instruments in Metheny’s Orchestrion, with a computer converting what looks like MIDI score data into mechanical impulses that then operate everything from marimbas to bongos to grand pianos. It’s an absolutely fascinating concept and there’s probably no one better than Metheny to exploit its possibilities.

The really fascinating thing about this collection of tunes is if you close your eyes and just listen to it, you’d be hard pressed to realize it isn’t “just another” Pat Metheny record. Time signatures change at the drop of a hat, colors are gently shaded and various sections amiably collide with each other to create a swirling panoply of sound. About the only thing that actually separates this from the standard Pat Metheny Group outings is the lack of florid piano solos, which is of course the purview of Mays. Instead most of these pieces set up really interesting, quasi-minimalist pointillistic backgrounds over which Metheny adds his typically inventive obbligati.

However, if you do keep your eyes open, you’re in a for a rather remarkable treat as you see all manner of weird Rube Goldberg-esque looking contraptions operating all sorts of instruments. While some of the mechanics are fairly straightforward, including a kind of cantilever apparatus that controls the marimba, others are considerably more complex and defy any easy description. This was obviously as much an engineering project as a musical one, and the entire Orchestrion ensemble takes up what looks to be a rather sizable performing space. There’s something inherently charming about watching this “old fashioned” technology play such “new fangled” music, something that no doubt added to Metheny’s interest in it.

Metheny’s instruments, whether played “hands on” or vicariously, include: guitar, piano, marimba, vibraphone, orchestra bells, basses, guitarbots, percussion, cymbals, drums, blown bottles, robotic Angeli guitar and other custom fabricated acoustic mechanical instruments. His set list includes:

• Unity Village
• The Orchestrion Suite:

  Orchestrion
  Entry Point
  Expansion
  Soul Search
  Spirit of the Air

• Sueño con Mexico
• Stranger in Town

Pat Metheny: The Orchestrion Project Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Pat Metheny: The Orchestrion Project is presented on 2D/3D Blu-ray by Eagle Rock Entertainment with AVC (2D) and MVC (3D) encoded 1080p transfers in 1.68:1. This is a fair to middling high definition presentation that is hobbled by pretty dim lighting in the studio where it was recorded and the choice of a dusky red backdrop behind Pat in large swaths of the outing. When the lights come on brightly, things tend to pop much better, and some of the extreme close-ups of the mechanical array provide abundant fine detail. But overall this is pretty soft and muddy looking.

Unfortunately all of those issues further exacerbate the 3D presentation, which really doesn't offer enough depth of field to ever really provide much of an immersive visual experience. In fact by far the most dimensional aspect to this performance are the superimposed titles before each tune, which fairly leap far out into the visual field and are clearly in front of the red backdrop. Occasionally camera angles provide at least a little depth, as in one close-up where the neck of Pat's guitar is aimed out at the camera and does seem to protrude from the background. But this is a pretty lackluster 3D experience, and it's kind of a head scratcher as to why it was released as a 3D product to begin with.

Pat Metheny: The Orchestrion Project Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Rah-roh (technical Scooby-Doo term). According to the packaging, this release is supposed to offer both a Dolby TrueHD 7.1 as well as a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix, but the only lossless audio I could access was an LPCM 2.0 stereo fold down. There is a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, but no 7.1 mix of any kind that I could find, despite the main audio menu offering a somewhat vague "Dolby 5.1/7.1" option. I tried this in two different systems to see if perhaps it was a weird authoring issue where the 3D version wouldn't access certain audio codecs, but I couldn't get to anything other than Dolby Digital 5.1 or LPCM 2.0 one way or the other. All of this said, while it's really disappointing not to have a lossless surround mix, the LPCM 2.0 mix at least provides some sonic "oomph" and really nicely articulates the often busy, percussive nature of many of these songs. I'm assuming this is a major authoring foul up by Eagle Rock, though, and I have a message into them to see if they're aware of the issue.

Pat Metheny: The Orchestrion Project Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Bonus Songs (HD; 21:22) include: Improvisation #1, 80/81 Broadway Blues, Tell Her You Saw Me and Antonia.


• The Interview (HD; 5:14) features Pat in October 2009 talking about the genesis of the project. Pat's lifelong love affair with his grandfather's player piano in Wisconsin is what started the master guitarist thinking about doing something like this.


• Making Of (HD; 15:28) gets more into the literal nuts and bolts of how Pat engineered this technology to work for this project.


• EPK (HD; 7:09). At last! Truth in advertising! This is a little promo piece Pat obviously put together to advertise the project.


• Orchestrion Studio Session (HD; 16:11) is from October 2009 and shows the piece being performed and recorded.


• Expansion Studio Session (HD; 9:06) does similar service for this selection, though this one is especially interesting to watch because it features so much percussion.

Pat Metheny: The Orchestrion Project Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Any fan of Pat Metheny is probably going to want to check out this project, even if the questionable 3D element is less than immersive. The more troubling aspect for a release devoted to music is the apparent absence of not one but two advertised lossless audio mixes, and until this mystery is settled, I recommend holding off on this release. I'll update this review if and when more information is received from Eagle Rock.