1.
University of Miami
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The University of Miami is a private, nonsectarian research university in Coral Gables, Florida, United States. As of 2015, the university enrolls 16,848 students in 12 separate colleges/schools, the university offers 116 undergraduate,105 masters, and 63 doctoral degree programs, of which 59 are research/scholarship and four professional areas of study. Over the years, the students have represented all 50 states. With more than 14,000 full and part-time faculty and staff, uM’s main campus in Coral Gables has 239 acres and over 5.7 million square feet of buildings. In the 2017 U. S. News and World Report study of colleges and universities, Research is a component of each academic division, with UM attracting $346.6 million per year in sponsored research grants. UM offers a library system with over 3.1 million volumes and exceptional holdings in Cuban heritage. UM also offers a range of student activities, including fraternities and sororities. UMs intercollegiate athletic teams, collectively known as the Miami Hurricanes, UMs football team has won five national championships since 1983 and its baseball team has won four national championships since 1982. They believed that a university would benefit their community. They were overly optimistic about future financial support for UM because the South Florida land boom was at its peak, the university began in earnest in 1925 when George E. Merrick, the founder of Coral Gables, gave 160 acres and nearly $5 million, to the effort. These contributions were land contracts and mortgages on real estate that had sold in the city. The university was chartered on April 18,1925 by the Circuit Court for Dade County. By the fall of 1926, when the first class of 372 students enrolled at UM, the boom had collapsed. For the next 15 years the university barely remained solvent, the construction of the first building on campus, now known as the Merrick Building, was left half built for over two decades due to economic difficulties. In the meantime, classes were held at the nearby Anastasia Hotel, with partitions separating classrooms, in 1929, Walsh and the other members of the Board of Regents resigned in the wake of the collapse of the Florida economy. UMs plight was so severe that students went door to door in Coral Gables collecting funds to keep it open, a reconstituted ten-member Board was chaired by UMs first president Bowman Foster Ashe. The new board included Merrick, Theodore Dickinson, E. B, douglas, David Fairchild, James H. Gilman, Richardson Saunders, Frank B. Shutts, Joseph H. Adams, and J. C, in 1930, several faculty members and more than 60 students came to UM when the University of Havana closed due to political unrest
2.
Coral Gables, Florida
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Coral Gables, officially the City of Coral Gables, is a city in Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States, located southwest of Downtown Miami. The United States Census Bureau estimates conducted in 2013 yielded the city had a population of 49,631, Coral Gables is home to the University of Miami. The city of Coral Gables has its own newspaper, Coral Gables News, Coral Gables was one of the first planned communities, and prefigured the development of the gated community and the homeowners association. It is infamous for its strict zoning regulations, the city was developed by George Merrick during the Florida land boom of the 1920s. The citys architecture is almost entirely Mediterranean Revival style, including the Coral Gables Congregational Church, the domed, Catholic Church of the Little Flower was built somewhat later, in a similar Spanish Renaissance style. By 1926, the city covered 10,000 acres and had netted $150 million in sales, Merrick meticulously designed the downtown commercial district to be only four blocks wide and more than two miles long. The main artery bisected the business district, Merrick could boast that every business in Coral Gables was less than a two-block walk. During World War II many Navy pilots and mechanics were trained and housed in Coral Gables, Coral Gables is located at 25°43′42″N 80°16′16″W. It is bordered on the west by Red Road north of Sunset Drive and West 49th Avenue and it is bordered on the north by Tamiami Trail/U. S. Route 41, except for a section that extends north of 8th Street for eight blocks between Ponce de Leon Boulevard and Douglas Road. S. 1 to Battersea Road, and by Biscayne Bay south of Battersea Road, on the south, it is bordered by the Charles Deering Estate. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 37.2 square miles. 13.1 square miles of it is land and 24.0 square miles of it is water. 4% were vacant, in 2000,24. 45% had children under the age of 18 living with them. In Coral Gables,61. 11% were family households,17. 3% had a householder with no husband present. The average household size was 2.36, and the household had 1.68 vehicles. In 2000, the city population was out with 17. 4% under the age of 18,14. 58% from 18 to 24,25. 02% from 25 to 44,27. 01% from 45 to 64. The median age was 39.44 years, the population consisted of 51. 31% females and 48. 69% males. In 2000, the income for a household in the city was $77,890
3.
Music school
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A music school is an educational institution specialized in the study, training and research of music. Such an institution can also be known as a school of music, music academy, music faculty, college of music, music department, Music instruction can be provided within the compulsory general education system, or within specialized childrens music schools such as the Purcell School. Elementary-school children can access music instruction also in after-school institutions such as music academies or music schools, in Venezuela El Sistema of youth orchestras provides free after-school instrumental instruction through music schools called núcleos. In other parts of Europe, the equivalents of higher school of music or university of music may be used, although music and music education may have been in existence for thousands of years, the earliest history is speculative. Even when history starts to be recorded, music is mentioned more frequently than music education. Within the biblical tradition, Hebrew litany was accompanied with music, but the Torah or Pentateuch was silent on the practice and instruction of music in the early life of Israel. ”This has led some scholars to believe that the prophet Samuel was the patriarch of a school which taught not only prophets and holy men. The schola cantorum in Rome may be the first recorded school in history. The school consisted of monks, secular clergy, and boys, wells Cathedral School, England founded as a Cathedral School in 909 a. d. to educate choristers, continues today to educate choristers and teaches instrumentalists. However the school appears to have been refounded at least once, Saint Martial school, 10th to 12th century, was an important school of composition at the Abbey of Saint Martial, Limoges. It is known for the composition of tropes, sequences, in this respect, it was an important precursor to the Notre Dame School. It was the Notre Dame school which was the earliest repertory of polyphonic music to gain international prestige, the school was a group of composers and singers working under the patronage of the great Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. First records on Escolania de Montserrat, boys choir linked to a school, back to 1307. The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia is one of the oldest musical institutions in the world, the term conservatory has its origin in 16th-century Renaissance Italy, where orphanages were attached to hospitals. The orphans were given an education there, and the term gradually applied to music schools. These hospitals-conservatories were among the first secular institutions equipped for training in music. By the 18th century, Italian conservatories were already playing a role in the training of artists. In the city of Naples, a conservatorio was strictly a secular place for teaching and learning specializing in music education. The second half of the 19th century saw the network expanding to the Americas, Rio de Janeiro, Boston, Baltimore and Chicago, Havana, and Buenos Aires
4.
Jazz
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Jazz is a music genre that originated amongst African Americans in New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in Blues and Ragtime. Since the 1920s jazz age, jazz has become recognized as a form of musical expression. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms, Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Although the foundation of jazz is deeply rooted within the Black experience of the United States, different cultures have contributed their own experience, intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as one of Americas original art forms. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on different national, regional, and local musical cultures, New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. In the 1930s, heavily arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz, bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging musicians music which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed in the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments. In the early 1980s, a form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful. Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Latin, the question of the origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm, a term dating back to 1860 meaning pep. The use of the word in a context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its first documented use in a context in New Orleans was in a November 14,1916 Times-Picayune article about jas bands. In an interview with NPR, musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying, When Broadway picked it up. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century. Jazz has proved to be difficult to define, since it encompasses such a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, in the opinion of Robert Christgau, most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz. As Duke Ellington, one of jazzs most famous figures, said, although jazz is considered highly difficult to define, at least in part because it contains so many varied subgenres, improvisation is consistently regarded as being one of its key elements
5.
Buddy Rich
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Bernard Buddy Rich was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. Widely considered one of the most influential drummers of all time and known for his technique, power. He performed with many bandleaders, most notably Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Count Basie, Rich was born in Brooklyn to Jewish-American parents Bess and Robert Rich, both vaudevillians. His talent for rhythm was first noted by his father, who saw that Buddy could keep a beat with spoons at the age of one. He began playing drums in vaudeville when he was 18 months old, at the peak of Richs childhood career, he was reportedly the second-highest paid child entertainer in the world. At age 11, he was performing as a bandleader and he received no formal drum instruction and went so far as to claim that instruction would only degrade his musical talent. He also never admitted to practicing, claiming to play the only during performances and was not known to read music. Rich first played jazz with a group in 1937 with Joe Marsala. He then played with Bunny Berigan and Artie Shaw, and even instructed a 14-year-old Mel Brooks in drumming for a period when playing for Shaw. At 21, Rich participated in his first major recording with the Vic Schoen Orchestra, in 1938, he was hired to play in Tommy Dorseys orchestra, where he met and performed with Frank Sinatra. In 1942, Rich left the Dorsey band to join the United States Marine Corps, in which he served as an instructor, never saw combat. He rejoined the Dorsey group after leaving the Marines two years later, in 1946, Rich formed his own band with financial support from Sinatra, and continued to lead different groups on and off until the early 1950s. In the early 50s, Rich played with Dorsey and began to perform with trumpeter Harry James, in 1966, Rich left James to develop a new big band. For most of the period from 1966 until his death, he led successful big bands in an era when the popularity of big bands had waned from their 1930s and 1940s peak. Rich also served as the drummer for many recordings, where his playing was often much more understated than in his own big-band performances. In 1968 Rich collaborated with the Indian tabla player Ustad Alla Rakha in the studio album Rich à la Rakha by Buddy Rich and Alla Rakha. Perhaps his most popular later performance was an arrangement of a medley derived from Leonard Bernsteins West Side Story. The West Side Story Suite is a complex arrangement which highlights Richs ability to blend the rhythm of his drumming into his bands playing of the musical chart
6.
Steve Morse
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Steven J. Steve Morse is an American guitarist and composer, best known as the founder of the Dixie Dregs, and since 1994, the guitar player of Deep Purple. Morses career has encompassed rock, country, funk, jazz, classical, in addition to his successful solo career, he was briefly a member of Kansas in the mid-1980s. Most recently, Morse became a member of the supergroup Flying Colors alongside long-time bandmate Dave LaRue, Steve Morse was born in Hamilton, Ohio. His family soon moved to Tennessee, then Ypsilanti, Michigan, although familiar with piano and clarinet, Morse ultimately became interested in guitar. Morse worked briefly with his older brother Dave in a band called The Plague until the family moved to Augusta, in the late 1960s, he played in a band called Three with his older brother and a junior high schoolmate, William Gerald Wooten, who played keyboards. The three performed at a local youth club, The Green Onion, and at Legion Halls. This short-lived group covered bands such as Led Zeppelin and Cream, West and Morse continued to play as a duet billed as the Dixie Dregs until Morses expulsion from school in the 10th grade. This expulsion enabled his enrollment at the University of Miami School of Music, during the 1970s, the University of Miami played host to a number of future influential musicians, including Bruce Hornsby, Pat Metheny, and Jaco Pastorius. Andy West also enrolled at the University of Miami and, with Morse, drummer Bart Yarnold, keyboardist Frank Josephs and violinist Allen Sloan, in 1975, the group compiled a recording used for promotional efforts. This recording was released in 1997 as The Great Spectacular. From late 1987 to early 1988, Morse worked as a commercial airline co-pilot, upon Morses graduation from the University of Miami in 1975, he and West officially named their group Dixie Dregs. Their first effort for Capricorn, Free Fall, established Morse as an important newcomer to the fusion genre, although receiving positive reviews as a pivotal jazz fusion album, it sold poorly. What If was released in 1978, writing credits were more collaborative and the bands sound had matured into more than what was strictly considered fusion at the time. Southern rock, classical, folk and country elements were combined to form a cohesive, though supported by a tour, record sales remained flat, but gained Morse and the band an invitation to perform at Montreux Jazz Festival on 23 July 1978. The recorded performance was released the year on Night of the Living Dregs. Capricorn went bankrupt in late 1979, and the Dixie Dregs were left without a label, Arista Records signed the band in 1979 to record three albums. Production control was handed to Morse, and Dregs of the Earth was released in May 1980, All eight tracks were written by Morse, and the album peaked at number 27 on Billboards Jazz Album Chart. Arista became increasingly concerned about Dixie Dregs album sales and pressured the band to change their name to simply The Dregs in an attempt to increase the visibility in the public eye
7.
Deep Purple
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Deep Purple are an English rock band formed in Hertford in 1968. The band is considered to be among the pioneers of metal and modern hard rock. Originally formed as a rock band, the band shifted to a heavier sound in 1970. Deep Purple, together with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, have referred to as the unholy trinity of British hard rock. They were listed in the 1975 Guinness Book of World Records as the globes loudest band for a 1972 concert at Londons Rainbow Theatre, Deep Purple have had several line-up changes and an eight-year hiatus. The 1968–1976 line-ups are commonly labelled Mark I, II, III and their second and most commercially successful line-up featured Ian Gillan, Jon Lord, Roger Glover, Ian Paice, and Ritchie Blackmore. This line-up was active from 1969 to 1973, and was revived from 1984 to 1989, and again from 1992 to 1993. The bands line-up has been more stable in recent years. Deep Purple were ranked number 22 on VH1s Greatest Artists of Hard Rock programme, the band received the Legend Award at the 2008 World Music Awards. Deep Purple were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016, in 1967, former Searchers drummer Chris Curtis contacted London businessman Tony Edwards, in the hope that he would manage a new group he was putting together, to be called Roundabout. Curtis vision was a supergroup where the members would get on and off. Impressed with the plan, Edwards agreed to finance the venture with two partners, John Coletta and Ron Hire, all of Hire-Edwards-Coletta Enterprises. The first recruit to the band was the classically trained Hammond organ player Jon Lord, Lord was currently performing in a backing band for the vocal group The Flower Pot Men, along with bassist Nick Simper and drummer Carlo Little. Simper had previously been in Johnny Kidd and the Pirates and survived the 1966 car crash that killed Kidd, Lord put the two on alert that hed been recruited for the Roundabout project, after which Simper and Little suggested guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, whom Lord had never met. Simper had known Blackmore since the early 1960s when his first band, the Renegades, debuted around the time as one of Blackmores early bands. HEC persuaded Blackmore to return from Hamburg to audition for the new group, Blackmore was making a name for himself as a studio session guitarist, and had also been a member of the Outlaws, Screaming Lord Sutch, and Neil Christian. Curtis erratic behaviour and lifestyle, fueled by LSD use, caused a sudden disinterest in the project he had started, but HEC was now intrigued with the possibilities Lord and Blackmore brought, while Lord and Blackmore were also keen to continue. The two carried on with recruiting members, keeping Tony Edwards as their manager
8.
Patti Scialfa
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Vivienne Patricia Patti Scialfa is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. Scialfa has been a member of the E Street Band since 1984 and has married to Bruce Springsteen since 1991. In 2014, Scialfa was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the E Street Band, Scialfa grew up in the Jersey Shore community of Deal, New Jersey. She was the child of Joseph Scialfa and Patricia Scialfa. Her father was of Sicilian ancestry and her mother is from Belfast and she also has half-siblings from her fathers second marriage. Her father was a local entrepreneur, who started with a single television store. Scialfa graduated from Asbury Park High School in 1971, Scialfa was writing songs from an early age and first worked professionally as a back-up singer for New Jersey bar bands after she completed high school. She has a degree from New York University, earned after she transferred from the University of Miamis jazz conservatory at the Frost School of Music. While in college, Scialfa was submitting original material to artists in the hope that it would be recorded. However, none of her songs were recorded, and after graduating, Scialfa worked as a busker, together with Soozie Tyrell and Lisa Lowell, she formed a street group known as Trickster. Scialfa had a role in The Stone Ponys house band Cats on a Smooth Surface. These gigs won her notice and, eventually, recording work with Southside Johnny, in 1984, Scialfa joined the E Street Band, three or four days before the opening show of the Born in the U. S. A. In 1986, she appeared on the Rolling Stones Dirty Work album and she worked with Keith Richards on his first solo disc Talk is Cheap. Steve Jordan, who co-produced the Richards record, was a friend of Scialfas from her Greenwich Village days, Scialfa maintains her music industry friendships over many years. Scialfa has recorded three albums, 1993s Rumble Doll, 2004s 23rd Street Lullaby and 2007s Play It as It Lays. Her first two albums received four-star reviews from Rolling Stone, while the third got three and a half and her records are a mix of confessional songwriting, impressive vocal range, and traditional country, folk and rock music. Springsteen and fellow E Street bandmates, like Lofgren and Roy Bittan, following the release of her second album, Scialfa played a series of club dates along the East Coast and she was also the opening act of the post-final night of the Vote for Change tour. When asked during the conference for the NFL Super Bowl in 2009 whether she was working on a new album
9.
E Street Band
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The E Street Band is an American rock band, and has been musician Bruce Springsteens primary backing band since 1972. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. S, Bonds, Darlene Love, Southside Johnny, The Grateful Dead, Santana, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Tracy Chapman, Lady Gaga and Aretha Franklin. The E Street Band was founded in October 1972, but it was not formally named until September 1974, Springsteen has put together other backing bands during his career, but the E Street Band has been together more or less continuously since its inception. The original lineup included Garry Tallent, Clarence Clemons, Danny Federici, Vini Mad Dog Lopez, the band took its name from the street in Belmar, New Jersey, where Sancious mother lived. She allowed the band to rehearse in her garage, ‘Bruce’ tourists to the area often mistakenly believe the house was on the corner of E Street and 10th Avenue, perhaps due to the song Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out about the bands beginnings. The Sancious house was at 1107 E Street with the garage squeezed between the house and the southside fence, Springsteens debut Greetings from Asbury Park, N. J. appeared in 1972, and the bands first national tour began in October 1972. Sancious, even though he played on the album, missed that first tour and it was not until June 1973 that he began appearing regularly on stage with the band. In February 1974, Lopez was asked to resign, and was replaced by Ernest Boom Carter. A few months later, in August 1974, Sancious and Carter left to form their own jazz band called Tone. They were replaced in September 1974 by Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg, violinist Suki Lahav was briefly a member of the band before leaving in March 1975 to emigrate to Israel. Steven Van Zandt, who had long associated with Springsteen and had played in previous bands with him. This lineup remained stable until the early 1980s when Van Zandt left to pursue his own career and he would later rejoin the band in 1995. In June 1984 Nils Lofgren was added to replace Van Zandt, Springsteens future wife, by 2002, the band also included Soozie Tyrell. Tyrell had earlier worked with Scialfa touring with Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, whether Tyrell became as full-fledged a member as the others remains unclear. When asked about the lack of mention in a release prior to the Magic Tour, Springsteen just said in response. Springsteen stated at the time, Danny is one of the pillars of our sound and has played beside me as a friend for more than 40 years. We all eagerly await his healthy and speedy return, Federici made his only return to the stage on March 20,2008, when he appeared for portions of a Springsteen and E Street Band performance at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. Federici died on April 17,2008 at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, Springsteens album, Working on a Dream, is dedicated to him
10.
Bill Frisell
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William Richard Bill Frisell is an American guitarist, composer and arranger. One of the guitarists in jazz since the late 1980s. He went on to work in a variety of contexts, notably as a member of the New York City Downtown Scene where he formed a partnership with composer John Zorn. He was also a member of Paul Motians groups from the early 1980s until the drummers death in 2011. Since about 2000, Frisells eclectic output as a bandleader has strongly emphasized folk, country music and he uses an array of effects to create unique sounds from his instrument. Frisell was born in Baltimore, Maryland, but spent most of his youth in the Denver and he studied clarinet with Richard Joiner of the Denver Symphony Orchestra as a youth, graduated from Denver East High School, and went to the University of Northern Colorado to study music. His original guitar teacher in the Denver-Aurora metropolitan area was Dale Bruning, after graduating from Northern Colorado, where he studied with Johnny Smith, Frisell went to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he studied with Jon Damian and Jim Hall. Frisells major break came when guitarist Pat Metheny was unable to make a session, and recommended Frisell to Paul Motian. Frisell became ECMs in-house guitar player, and worked on albums, most notably Jan Garbareks 1981 Paths. Frisells first solo release was In Line, which featured solo guitar as well as duets with bassist Arild Andersen, Frisells first group to receive much acclaim was a quartet with Kermit Driscoll on bass, Joey Baron on drums, and Hank Roberts on cello. Many other albums with larger ensembles were recorded with this group as the core, in the 1980s, Frisell lived in the New York City area and was an active participant in the citys music scene. He lived in Hoboken, New Jersey, where the rents were cheaper and he forged an early partnership with John Zorn—including as a member of quick-change band Naked City—and performed or recorded with many others. He also became known for his work in Motians trio, along with saxophonist Joe Lovano, in 1988 Frisell left New York City and moved to Seattle, Washington. During this time he performed with musicians, including up. He also branched out by performing soundtracks to silent films of Buster Keaton with his trio, in the mid-1990s, Frisell disbanded his trio. He continued the trend marked by Have a Little Faith by more explicitly incorporating elements of bluegrass and his friendship with Gary Larson led him to provide music for the TV version of The Far Side. Since 2000, Frisell has lived on Bainbridge Island, Washington, in 1999 Frisell was commissioned by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota to compose Blues Dream, which he premiered on November 15,1999. He later recorded the work for a 2001 release on Nonesuch, also in 1999 he released The Sweetest Punch, which featured a seven-piece jazz ensemble reworking the tunes written and recorded by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach on Painted from Memory
11.
Pat Metheny Group
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Pat Metheny Group is a jazz fusion group founded in 1977. The core members of the group are guitarist, composer and bandleader Pat Metheny, and keyboardist and composer Lyle Mays, who was part of the groups inception in 1977. Other long-standing members include bassist and producer Steve Rodby, who joined in 1981, and Paul Wertico, founder Pat Metheny first emerged on the jazz scene in the mid-1970s with a pair of solo albums. First was Bright Size Life, released in 1976, an album with bass guitarist Jaco Pastorius. The next album, released in 1977, was Watercolors, featuring Eberhard Weber on bass, pianist Lyle Mays, the two friends would talk into the late evening during the early 1970s and discuss the new possibilities their instruments held. In 1977, bassist Mark Egan joined Metheny, Mays, and they released the self-titled album Pat Metheny Group in 1978 on the ECM label, which featured several songs co-written by Metheny and Mays. The group built upon its success with tours in the USA. The group featured a sound, particularly due to Methenys Gibson ES-175 guitar coupled to two digital delay units and Mays Oberheim synthesizer and Yamaha Organ. The group played in a range of styles from experimental to grassroots music. The Pat Metheny Group released the album Offramp in 1982, Offramp marked the first recorded appearance of bassist Steve Rodby in the group, and also featured Brazilian guest artist Naná Vasconcelos. Offramp was also the groups first recording to win a Grammy Award, in 1983, a live album titled Travels was released. It won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Fusion Performance in 1984,1984 brought the release of First Circle a popular album that featured compositions with mixed meters. With this album, the group had a new drummer, Paul Wertico, Wertico and Steve Rodby having both played with the Simon & Bard Group. A soundtrack album The Falcon and the Snowman followed in 1985 and it featured the song This Is Not America, a writing and performing collaboration with David Bowie which reached #14 in the British Top 40 and #32 on the US Billboard Hot 100 in early 1985. The South American influence would continue and intensify on First Circle with the addition of Argentine multi-instrumentalist Pedro Aznar and this period saw the commercial popularity of the band increase, especially thanks to the live recording Travels. First Circle would also be Methenys last project with the ECM label, Metheny had been a key artist for ECM, the next three Pat Metheny Group releases would be based around a further intensification of the Brazilian rhythms first heard in the early 80s. Additional South American musicians appear as guests, notably Brazilian percussion player Armando Marcal, still Life, was the Groups first release on new label, Geffen Records, and featured several tracks which have long been popular with the groups followers, and which are still in their setlist. Another popular highlight was Last Train Home, a rhythmically relentless piece evoking the American Midwest, the 1989 release Letter from Home continued this approach, with the South American influence becoming even more prevalent in its bossa nova and samba rhythms
