Pat Metheny follows last spring's worldwide Orchestrion Tour with an additional 19 North American performance halls beginning October 1 at the Alys Stephens Center in Birmingham, Alabama; tickets are on sale now. The performances feature the music and instruments of Metheny's latest album, Orchestrion, released on Nonesuch in January.

Metheny, whom the New York Times calls “easily one of the most enterprising jazz musicians of his generation,” has performed Orchestrion shows to sold-out audiences in some of the world’s best-known halls, including the Barbican in London, l’Olympia in Paris, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, and two sold-out nights at New York City’s Town Hall. London’s Telegraph calls the show “a triumph,” while the Kansas City Star says, “Metheny’s Orchestrion is nothing short of spectacular ... Endlessly fascinating and visually dazzling.”

Orchestrion brings a musical idea from the late 19th and early 20th centuries—a large mechanical multi-instrument device that utilizes actual orchestral instruments of various types, called an “orchestrion”—to the technologies of today. Metheny’s concept includes a large ensemble of acoustic instruments—including several pianos, drum kit, marimbas, “guitar-bots,” dozens of percussion instruments, and even cabinets of carefully tuned bottles. Through Metheny’s guitar and compositional mind, five new original pieces showcase the instruments as they are struck, plucked, and otherwise played via the technology of solenoid switches and pneumatics. Metheny worked for months with a brilliant team of inventors to develop and assemble the “New Orchestrion” for this project.

“As the instruments started to trickle in from the various inventors,” Metheny says, “the experience of writing for them and figuring out what might be possible with them provided a self-imposed challenge that proved to be difficult and time-consuming, but absolutely exhilarating. I am excited to share this project. If nothing else, this has turned out to be something unique. And in the process of developing all this music and these instruments and discovering what they can do and what they are good at, I learned so much. It feels like progress and has gotten some notes out of me that I didn’t know were there. But the surprise was just how far I was able to go with it all. Within this new environment, I found something in there that took me to some new places.”

Below are the currently scheduled tour dates. For more information, including links to purchase tickets, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour. To pick up a copy of Orchestrion with audiophile-quality MP3s of the complete album included at checkout, head to the Nonesuch Store.

PAT METHENY FALL 2010 ORCHESTRION TOUR