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PRIMARY WAVE MUSIC PARTNERS WITH PAT METHENY
THE PARTNERSHIP INCLUDES THE 20X GRAMMY AWARD WINNER’S
PUBLISHING AND RECORDINGS
New York, NY (October 20, 2025) – Primary Wave Music, the leading independent publisher of iconic and legendary music in the world, announced today their partnership with the incomparable guitarist, composer, and bandleader Pat Metheny. Terms of the deal will see the publisher partner with Metheny on his music publishing catalog, as well as recordings. Additionally, under the deal, Metheny will launch his own label – Uniquity Music – in partnership with Green Hill Music which falls under the Sun Label Group umbrella. All future releases from Metheny will be released through Green Hill Music and the label will provide marketing support and more, beginning with his next Side-Eye project coming in 2026 with significant world touring. Metheny says Side-Eye is “an ongoing setting to feature a rotating cast of new and upcoming musicians who have particularly caught my interest along the way.”
Included in this exciting new partnership are Metheny’s biggest hits across his nearly 50-year career in music that encompasses over 50 studio albums including Still Life (Talking), Letter From Home, Secret Story and others. Songs include “Last Train Home,” “Always & Forever,” “Bright Size Life,” “Better Days Ahead,” and more. With over 20 million records sold worldwide, his music has won him an astounding 20 Grammy Awards, ten of which came from ten different categories. Metheny is the only musician to have achieved that feat. In addition to his wins, Metheny has an additional 39 Grammy nominations. In 2015 he was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame, becoming only the fourth guitarist to be included (along with Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian and Wes Montgomery) and its youngest member. In 2018 he was named an NEA Jazz Master, the nation’s highest honor in jazz, awarded to the recipients “for their lifetime achievements and exceptional contributions to the advancement of jazz.” He one of the only jazz musicians to be inducted into the Royal Swedish Academy of Music and was recognized in his home state by being included in the Missouri Hall of Fame.
Of the partnership Pat Metheny said, “My dream for years has been to have a place where all of my work, past and future, could live under a single umbrella, a label of my own.” He goes on with the creation of Uniquity Music, “that dream has now become a reality. In many ways I feel like I am just beginning, and I expect the next period to represent the best of where music has led me so far. I am thrilled to launch this new era with the great folks at Primary Wave and I can’t wait to get going with everything.”
Dominic Pandiscia, Primary Wave Music’s Chief Strategy Officer, adds “Pat Metheny is one of the all-time great composers and musicians irrespective of genre. It is truly a privilege to partner with him across both his timeless body of work, as well as supporting his future creative pursuits.”
About Pat Metheny
Pat Metheny was born in Lee’s Summit, MO on August 12, 1954 into a musical family. Starting on trumpet at the age of 8, Metheny switched to guitar at age 12. By the age of 15, he was working regularly with the best jazz musicians in Kansas City, receiving valuable on-the- bandstand experience at an unusually young age. Metheny first burst onto the international jazz scene in 1974. Over the course of his three-year stint with vibraphone great Gary Burton, the young Missouri native already displayed his soon-to-become trademarked playing style, which blended the loose and flexible articulation customarily reserved for horn players with an advanced rhythmic and harmonic sensibility: a way of playing and improvising that was modern in conception but grounded deeply in the jazz tradition of melody, swing, and the blues.
With the release of his first album, Bright Size Life (1975), he reinvented the traditional “jazz guitar” sound for a new generation of players. Throughout his career, Pat Metheny has continued to redefine the genre by utilizing new technology and constantly working to evolve the improvisational and sonic potential of his instrument.
Metheny’s versatility is nearly without peer. Over the years, he has performed with artists as diverse as Steve Reich to Ornette Coleman to Herbie Hancock to Jim Hall to Milton Nascimento to David Bowie. Metheny’s body of work includes compositions for solo guitar, small ensembles, electric and acoustic instruments, large orchestras, and ballet pieces and even the robotic instruments of his Orchestrion project, while always sidestepping the limits of any one genre.
As well as being an accomplished musician, Metheny has also participated in the academic arena as a music educator. At 18, he was the youngest teacher ever at the University of Miami. At 19, he became the youngest teacher ever at the Berklee College of Music, where he also received an honorary doctorate more than twenty years later, in 1996. He has also received honorary doctorate degrees from the University of Missouri, McGill University and the University of Miami. He has conducted music workshops all over the world, from the Dutch Royal Conservatory to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz to clinics in Asia and South America.
Metheny has spent much of his life on tour, often doing more than 100 shows a year since becoming a bandleader in the 70’s. At the time of this writing, having just completed more than 200 solo concerts around the world, he continues to be one of the brightest stars of the jazz community.
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