Melbourne festival review: celebrated guitarist makes glorious return

Pat Metheny has described his Unity Group as a "Technicolour, IMAX version" of the band it grew out of (the Unity Band). The group is also, in many ways, a creative summation of Metheny's career to date, making Wednesday's concert an ideal way to experience the celebrated guitarist on his first visit to Melbourne since the mid '80s.

The show – which ran for more than  2½ hours – featured both the Unity Group and Unity Band lineups, interspersed with smaller groupings to highlight individual players.  Metheny opened the concert with a compelling solo rumination on his 42-string Pikasso guitar, which quivered and shimmered like an amplified harp. Unity Band members Chris Potter (on saxophone and clarinet), Ben Williams (bass) and Antonio Sanchez (drums) then joined the leader on stage, offering several numbers from their 2012 album along with a clutch of Metheny's tunes from the '80s, including a heartbreakingly lyrical rendition of The Bat that coaxed exquisite solos from Metheny and Potter.

An hour into the show, the addition of multi-instrumentalist Giulio Carmassi and the unveiling of Metheny's eye-popping Orchestrion marked the transition to the Unity Group.  The elaborate pieces Metheny has written for this group are more like miniature suites, incorporating multiple sections, shifting time signatures and complex instrumental layers.

Rise Up opened in a blaze of flamenco-fuelled fire, with Metheny and Potter strumming furiously on acoustic guitars, Sanchez on cajon and Carmassi and Williams on syncopated handclaps.  On Kin, Metheny conjured gleefully ecstatic wails from his guitar synthesiser and triggered waves of glockenspiel-like percussion from the automated Orchestrion.

A series of intimate duets allowed Metheny to step away from the technological wizardry and demonstrate his extraordinary flexibility as a player, whether accompanying Carmassi's haunting wordless vocals, delving into gritty rock territory with a feisty Sanchez or engaging Potter's tenor in an exhilarating dance through All the Things You Are, which  was, like so much of Metheny's music,  breathtakingly virtuosic and joyously exuberant.