James Solo Guitar Arrangement

6 years ago, Jun Izumi and I recorded Pat Metheny's First Circle and it was one of the most challenging and exciting projects ever for me to work on. Looking back how I got started playing jazz in 2005, I was 18 years old freshman at Koyo Conservatory Kobe. One of my fellow guitar players showed me Pat Metheny's Speaking of Now DVD. I was shocked to watch Pat jumping on the stage playing the guitar, it looked like he was playing with all of his energy. I felt like I wanted to become like him someday or there would be no other way of living my life. That was a turning point for me as a teenage metalhead guitarist. Many years later, I somehow got to the point where I became able to play Pat Metheny Group's music with just 2 people, me, 7string guitar and a singer Jun Izumi in 2018. Since covid hit, Jun had to stay in Japan for a long time and I was not confident to remotely make any more Pat Metheny covers. Fast forward to March 2024, we decided to get back on this project and made plans for filming more videos in NYC. Jun came to NYC for the first time in 6 years, we ended up filming 9 Pat Metheny songs adding some more extra songs. I made up my mind to upgrade mics and camera gears to get the best out of it. Today we are releasing the 1st video of the series and it's Pat's standard number "James". We are very happy with the turn out of pre-production, now super excited to share our journey with you. Please let us know in the Youtube comment section if you liked the video. Early access to these videos are exclusively available on Jun’s patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/c/junizumi/posts