The Pat Metheny Trio, with bassist Christian McBride and drummer Antonio Sanchez, has been making its way across the country, touring with music from the recent Nonesuch release Day Trip. Tomorrow night, the group will be making a very special tour stop in Unity Village, Missouri, just outside of Kansas City. Even more important, it's just a stone's throw from Lee's Summit, where Pat grew up and whose music program, in part, the Metheny Music Foundation has been established to support.

Proceeds from Friday's sold-out concert at the Union Village Activities Center will go to support the efforts of the Foundation, which hopes to provide scholarships for students from Lee's Summit, where four generations of Methenys have lived and contributed to community life. In fact, high-school music students from the town will also take the stage, as will Pat's brother, horn player Mike.

To read more about the event and the influence of Pat's hometown on the music he creates, there's a feature article in the Kansas City Sun you can find at kansascity.com. For more on the Foundation and its efforts, visit methenymusicfoundation.org.

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The Trio tour continues with stops in Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, before closing this leg of the tour with a stop at New York City's Town Hall. The Hartford Courant is already looking forward to the St. Patrick's night concert at New Haven's Shubert Theater in what writer Owen McNally says "might well be one of the year's top jazz concerts in Connecticut."

In his review of Day Trip, McNally writes that Pat is "mining an artistically rich niche with his super acoustic trio." He continues:

The trio sets high benchmarks for fluent, impeccable articulation with its heady mix of technical clarity and daring spontaneity ... [and] can also burn dramatically ... with everybody sizzling in a dialogue, or triologue, full of fresh, zesty ideas.

Of the album's title track, McNally writes:

With its swinging, lyrical guitar lines, crackling drums and rocking bass, "Day Trip," the new disc's bright title tune and final track, is a summation of the high craftsmanship that surges through the nine selections.

In the end, McNally finds the album "alive with interplay, tight ensemble cohesion and an open-ended spirit of liberty ... an irrepressible celebration guaranteed to blow away your late winter blahs."

To read the album review and concert preview, visit courant.com.

For more tour information, click here.

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