ECM releases Pat Metheny’s Bright Size Life as part of its Luminessence audiophile vinyl-reissue series.

The Luminessence series is a kaleidoscope, shedding light on the jewels of the label’s deep catalogue in elegant, high-quality editions. The hallmarks of the series: original and evocative music, imaginatively played and sensitively produced. The recordings underline the scope and variety of ECM’s world of sound and the LPs are presented in different formats.

Pat Metheny | Bright Size Life | ECM 1073 | Release LP: August 2, 2024

Pat Metheny | 6-string guitar, electric 12-string guitar
Jaco Pastorius | bass
Bob Moses | drums

Recorded: December 1975, Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg

I personally feel this is a great record and recommend it to everyone. It’s positive and hot and simply excellent.” – Gary Burton, in the liner notes.

Pat Metheny had debuted at ECM as a member of Gary Burton’s band on the album Ring in 1974, but Bright Size Life, his first studio recording as a leader, was the album that decisively put him on the map as a bright new force, with something fresh to say in the context of contemporary jazz. Recorded in Ludwigsburg in December 1975, and produced by Manfred Eicher, the album featured Metheny’s regular touring band of the day, with Bob Moses on drums and the virtuosic but then largely unknown Jaco Pastorius on bass guitar.

“I could happily play all the music from Bright Size Life right now,” Metheny said in an interview for the Library of Congress in 2021. “It still seems viable; the arguments there still seem valid and worth thinking about…. My sense at the time was that I wanted to make a record that might be the only record I would ever make. I hoped to make a statement on things that were important to me in terms of melody, harmony, trio playing, and even kind of life in general.”