Mays Takes Jazz to Other End of the Spectrum

Keyboardist Lyle Mays is currently touring the United States with an acoustic jazz quartet, a milieu that has startled some of his fans.

“People don’t know what this music’s about,” said Mays, 39, who brings his ace band--bassist Marc Johnson, drummer Mark Walker and saxophonist Bob Sheppard--to the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano tonight and to the Strand in Redondo Beach on Saturday.

Mays, known for his work in the Pat Metheny Group, and guitarist Metheny’s chief collaborator, hasn’t recorded in five years, hasn’t toured in six. His last cross-continental jaunt found the keyboardist fronting a trio that attempted to re-create the textured, expansive contemporary sounds of “Street Dreams,” Mays’ second album.

Now he’s touring in support of “Fictionary,” his new album. It’s a sublime acoustic piano-bass-drums trio session in the Keith Jarrett-Bill Evans mode. Sometimes it swings; other times it’s moody and ethereal.

What caused the dramatic musical shift?

“That last tour left me puzzled,” he said in a recent phone interview from a hotel in the Bay Area, where he was playing. “It didn’t seem to help record sales and it was a financial disaster. I was questioning if that was what I wanted to do--make a record, get a band together. It was a lot of dues-paying for what had dubious rewards.”

In the intervening years, Mays, a graduate of the music school at North Texas State University, focused his energies on his work with Metheny and on exploring his interest in composition.

He’s written several works that have been recorded, including “Somewhere in Maine” (For Violin, Marimba and Tape), featured on an album works by new composers, and a background score for a children’s album, “East of the Sun, West of the Moon.”

“I have been doing some self-study,” said Mays, who has recently moved back to his native Wisconsin after a 15-year stay in Boston. Despite so much emphasis in jazz on improvisation, “I don’t think the tradition of Western musical composition can be ignored, and it has a lot to do with the roots of jazz,” Mays says. “I’m trying to find some way that those two traditions can be connected.”

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As interested as he is in developing his compositional stance, Mays said he also realized that “if I don’t get out there (and record and perform) on my own, people have no idea what I’m up to,” he said. “There’s a big difference between private musical pursuit and what’s available on record.”

When Metheny, who has served as Mays’ executive producer on all three of his solo projects, suggested a trio recording last spring after a Metheny Group tour had just been completed, Mays was ready.

If truth be told, he also was a bit anxious.

“There are people out there who have devoted their lives to playing the piano and I haven’t,” said Mays, who often employs synthesizers in his appearances with Metheny, though he always solos on piano.

“But after I got over the shock of a piano-trio date, I realized there was quite a bit of material that hadn’t found its way onto my other projects. These were primarily vehicles for improvisation, which were naturals for this date,” he said.

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Recording “Fictionary” with bassist Johnson and drummer Jack DeJohnette was a most spontaneous affair. And, Mays said, so are the tour performances. “Besides pieces from my albums, we do some group free improvisations, and I play a number of unaccompanied piano pieces,” he said.

Mays is happy to have the opportunity the tour presents.

“I’m trying to become more versatile in my soloing, trying to bring a lot of compositional thought to it,” he said. “It’s a step toward integrating those two worlds. The goal is to become fluent with the things I have discovered in the compositional process, and get those out in real time, in an improvised setting.”

* Keyboardist Lyle Mays and Sound Minds play tonight at 8 at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. $18.50. (714) 496-8930.