Wikipedia

Lyle Mays

For Lyle Mays' 1986 solo album, seeLyle Mays (album).

Lyle David Mays(November 27, 1953 – February 10, 2020)[1]was an Americanjazzpianist, composer, and member of thePat Metheny Group.[2][3]Metheny and Mays composed and arranged nearly all of the group's music, for which Mays won elevenGrammy Awards.[4]

Lyle Mays
Mays with the Pat Metheny Group in 2010.
Mays with thePat Metheny Groupin 2010.
Background information
Birth nameLyle David Mays
Born(1953-11-27)November 27, 1953
Wausaukee, Wisconsin,U.S.
DiedFebruary 10, 2020(2020-02-10)(aged 66)
Los Angeles,California,U.S.
GenresJazz,Contemporary jazz
OccupationMusician
Instrument(s)Piano, keyboards
Years active1975–2020
LabelsECM,Geffen,Warner Bros.
Websitelylemays
External image
image iconPortrait of Lyle Mays by Michel Delsol (1988)

Biography

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While growing up in ruralWisconsin,Mays had a lot of curiosity but had to learn many things all by himself due to a lack of available resources and information. He had four main interests: chess, mathematics, architecture, and music. His mother Doris played piano and organ, and his father Cecil, a truck driver, taught himself to play guitar by ear.[5]His teacher allowed him to practiceimprovisationafter the structured elements of the lesson were completed. At the age of nine, he played the organ at a family member's wedding, and at fourteen he began to play in church.[5]During his senior year of high school, at summer national stage band camp in Normal, Illinois, he was introduced to jazz pianistMarian McPartland.[4]

Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz FestivalandFilles de Kilimanjaroby Miles Davis (both recorded in 1968) were important influences. He attended theUniversity of North Texasafter transferring from theUniversity of Wisconsin–Eau Claire.[6][7][8]He composed and arranged for theOne O'Clock Lab Bandand was the composer and arranger for the Grammy Award-nominated albumLab 75.[9]

After leaving the University of North Texas, Mays toured in the US and Europe withWoody Herman'sThundering Herd(big band) for approximately eight months. In 1975, he metPat Methenyat the Wichita Jazz Festival and soon afterward they co-founded thePat Metheny Group.Mays served as pianist, keyboardist, sound designer, and a core contributing composer for the group over its entire 33-year formation. The group had 23 Grammy nominations, winning the award 11 times.[10]

After the Pat Metheny Group’s long-form recordingThe Way Upin 2005, a brief 2008-2009 Japan tour, and the "Songbook Tour" in Europe in 2010, Mays decided to retire from public music performance, although he did perform at the Western Michigan University Jazz Club in 2010 and at aTed Talkevent[11]atCaltechin 2011 with his own groups. In an interview withJAZZIZmagazine in 2016, Mays said he had been working as a software development manager because of changes in the music industry.[12][13]

Work

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Mays composed, orchestrated, and arranged as a core member of the Pat Metheny Group, playing piano, organ, synthesizers and, occasionally, trumpet, accordion,[14]agogôbells,[15]autoharp,[16]toy xylophone,[17]and electric guitar.[18]He also composed, performed, and recorded dramatic scores for children's audiobooks, such asEast of the Sun, West of the Moon,with text narrated byMax von Sydow;Moses the Lawgiver,told byBen Kingsley;The Lion and the Lamb,narrated byAmy GrantandChristopher Reeve;andThe Tale of Mr. Jeremy FisherandTale of Peter Rabbit,read byMeryl Streep.[4]In 1985, Metheny's and Mays's compositions were performed by theSteppenwolf Theaterin Chicago in the critically acclaimed production ofOrphansbyLyle Kessler.[19]Lyle's Oberheim analog synth pad and his voice counting the second hand of a clock at the recording session, "55..., 3..," which can be heard from the bridge part of "As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls (1981),"was used for Christian Dior's Fahrenheit Cologne commercials for almost 30 years, from 1988 to 2016.[20]

Mays was regarded by both professional musicians and music fans as one of the most innovative and creative jazz pianists and keyboardists, but he considered himself more of a serious contemporary composer with an advanced approach to classical music, harmonic aesthetics, and structural development through long forms.[21][22]He composed several contemporary classical pieces, such as "Twelve Days in the Shadow of a Miracle", a piece for harp, flute, viola, and synthesizer recorded in 1996 by the Debussy Trio.[23]Mays also composed "Distance" for Pat Metheny Group’s Grammy-winning and RIAA-certified Gold album,Still Life (Talking)(1987, Geffen), "Mindwalk"[24]in 2009 for marimba playerNancy Zeltsman,and previously "Somewhere in Maine"[25]in 1988 for her duo with violinist Sharan Leventhal, Marimolin, and "Street Dreams 3" for his solo album,Street Dreams(Geffen, 1988) with top classical performers in New York City.

Apart from his work with Metheny, Mays formed his own trio withMarc Johnson(contrabass),Jack DeJohnette(drums), andPeter Erskine(drums) and formed the Lyle Mays Quartet with Marc Johnson or Eric Hochberg (contrabass), Mark Walker (drums), andBob Sheppard(saxophone). In 2015, Naxos Germany released a live double albumThe Ludwigsburg Concertfrom their 1993 appearance (with Johnson) there.[26]

He collaborated with electronic keyboard instrument makers,KurzweilandKorg,to develop their new sounds since he had great knowledge of both computer programming and music synthesis that he learned by himself.

One of Mays’ best-known compositions is "Close to Home," or "Mars" as it was initially called. He first recorded "Mars" in a 1977 session with the Dallas fusion band High Rise.[27]ThePat Metheny Groupperformed the piece live between 1979 and 1982 with Metheny playing the main theme on guitar. Mays experimented widely with the introductory material, settling on the quintessential blend of synthesizer and piano for his eponymous album in 1986. Mays performed the piece on acoustic piano with his quartet as late as 1993. (See interactive timeline of his performances of "Close to Home" atthis link.[28]) The R&B/funk group,Earth, Wind & Fire,recorded "Close to Home" as an interlude on their 1990 albumHeritage.[29]The prominent Brazilian singer-songwriter,Milton Nascimento,combined Mays' composition with Portuguese lyrics by Luis Avellar to create "Quem é Você," which was recorded on his 1991 live album,O Planeta Blue Na Estrada Do Sol.[30]Another Brazilian singer,Zizi Possi,sang "Quem é Você" for her 1994 album,Valsa Brasileira.[31]

Since Mays was a young child, he was enthusiastic about architecture and constructed fantasy structures withLEGObricks, keeping this passion through his later years.[32]As an amateur architect, he designed his own house and home studio, and his sister Joan's house inWisconsin.Mays was particularly influenced by his fellow Wisconsinian, architect and designerFrank Lloyd Wright,the father of American modernism.[33]Much as Wright realized the innovative integration of different sources in creating his unique landscapes, Mays consistently sought to bring a deep, intellectual and organic appreciation of structural forms to his soundscape design, jazz composition and performance, and software development projects.[34]

Death and legacy

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Mays died inLos Angelesat the age of 66 on February 10, 2020, "after a long battle with a recurring illness".[1]

Mays wasposthumously awardedthe Grammy Award forBest Instrumental Compositionat the64th Annual Grammy Awardsin 2022 for his composition "Eberhard," dedicated to the German double bassist and composer,Eberhard Weber.[35]

Discography

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As leader

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As co-leader

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As a member

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One O'Clock Lab Band

  • Lab 74(NTSU Lab Jazz, 1974)
  • Lab 75(NTSU Lab Jazz, 1975)

Pat Metheny Group

As sideman

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WithPat Metheny

With others

Film and audiobook scoring

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  • The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher & The Tale of Peter Rabbit(Rabbit Ears, 1988)
  • East of the Sun, West of the Moon(Short Video) (Rabbit Ears, 1991)
  • Moses the Lawgiver(Rabbit Ears, 1993)
  • Mustang: The Hidden Kingdom(TV Movie documentary, 1994)
  • The Lion and the Lamb(Short Animation) (Rabbit Ears, 1996)

Transcription book

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  • The Music of Lyle Mays:Compositions, Transcriptions, and Musical Transformations - Transcribed and edited by Pierre J. Piscitelli, Lyle Mays (Author)(Independently published, 2021)

References

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  1. ^abWest, Michael J. (February 11, 2020)."Lyle Mays 1953–2020".JazzTimes.RetrievedFebruary 27,2020.
  2. ^"NTSU Lab Band Record on Sale".Denton Record-Chronicle.October 2, 1974. p. 22.RetrievedDecember 5,2014– viaNewspapers.
  3. ^"Grammy Nomination to Lab Band Album".The Courier-Gazette.January 30, 1976. p. 2.RetrievedDecember 5,2014– viaNewspapers.
  4. ^abc"Lyle Mays at UNT Division of Jazz Studies".University of North Texas.Archived fromthe originalon November 22, 2016.RetrievedMarch 19,2010.
  5. ^abKeepnews, Peter (February 12, 2020)."Lyle Mays, 66, Pat Metheny Group Keyboardist, Is Dead".The New York Times.RetrievedFebruary 27,2020.
  6. ^"The State: Telephone directory for Baldwin and Woodville, Wisconsin: electronic facsimile: Browse Text".Digicoll.library.wisc.edu.RetrievedNovember 12,2017.
  7. ^"UNT alumnus Lyle Mays to serve as guest artist in February – North Texan".Northtexan.unt.edu.RetrievedNovember 12,2017.
  8. ^"Really Good Music".Reallygoodmusic.RetrievedNovember 12,2017.
  9. ^"February 2006 – Division of Jazz Studies".Jazz.unt.edu.RetrievedNovember 12,2017.
  10. ^"Jazz Keyboardist Lyle Mays Dies At 66".GRAMMY.February 11, 2020.RetrievedSeptember 15,2020.
  11. ^"Lyle Mays".Tedxcaltech.
  12. ^"Lyle Mays".JAZZIZ Magazine.August 7, 2016.RetrievedSeptember 23,2016.
  13. ^"Mark Walker" Chord Bible Belt "featuring LYLE MAYS".YouTube.October 12, 2012.RetrievedSeptember 28,2021.
  14. ^"Letter from Home – Pat Metheny Group, Pat Metheny | Credits".AllMusic.RetrievedSeptember 28,2021.
  15. ^"First Circle – Pat Metheny, Pat Metheny Group | Credits".AllMusic.RetrievedSeptember 28,2021.
  16. ^"Pat Metheny Group – Pat Metheny Group, Pat Metheny | Credits".AllMusic.RetrievedSeptember 28,2021.
  17. ^"The Way Up – Pat Metheny, Pat Metheny Group | Credits".AllMusic.RetrievedSeptember 28,2021.
  18. ^Search Pat Metheny – The Roots Of Coincidence – Speaking of Now Live
  19. ^Rich, Frank (May 8, 1985)."Theater: Steppenwolf Presents 'Orphans'".The New York Times.RetrievedFebruary 27,2020.
  20. ^Christian Dior – Aqua Fahrenheit (Long Version) Commercial (2011)onYouTube
  21. ^Piscitelli, Pierre (2021).The Music of Lyle Mays.pp. 59, 109.ISBN9798735205494.
  22. ^"Lyle Mays at the Horizons of Jazz".
  23. ^"Twelve Days in the Shadow of a Miracle Sheet Music by Lyle Mays".Sheetmusicplus.RetrievedNovember 12,2017.
  24. ^"Zeltsman-Intermediate Masterworks for Marimba Volume 2".Steveweissmusic.RetrievedSeptember 28,2021.
  25. ^"Marimolin: Nancy Zeltsman, Marimba & Sharan Leventhal, Violin".Prestomusic.RetrievedSeptember 28,2021.
  26. ^"The Ludwigsburg Concert – NaxosDirect".Naxosdirect.RetrievedSeptember 28,2021.
  27. ^"The Dallas Sessions".lylemays.February 8, 2021.RetrievedMarch 28,2024.
  28. ^"Lyle Mays' Close to Home (Mars) Timeline".Knightlab TimelineJS3.RetrievedMarch 28,2024.
  29. ^"Interlude: Close to Home".YouTube.August 10, 2015.RetrievedSeptember 28,2021.
  30. ^"Milton Nascimento-Quem é Você? (Áudio Oficial)".YouTube.RetrievedSeptember 28,2021.
  31. ^"Zizi Possi –" Quem é Você "(Valsa Brasileira/1993)".YouTube.November 6, 2013.RetrievedSeptember 28,2021.
  32. ^"A Jazz Star, Composition & Legos".Lylemays.November 10, 2020.RetrievedSeptember 28,2021.
  33. ^Honisch, Thomas (January 25, 2007)."Lyle Mays interview".All About Jazz.RetrievedFebruary 27,2020.
  34. ^Piscitelli, Pierre (2021).The Music of Lyle Mays.ISBN9798735205494.
  35. ^Chapman, Wilson (April 3, 2022)."Grammys 2022 Winners List (Updating Live)".
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