Lyle Mays

LYLE MAYS (born Lyle David Mays on 27 November 1953 in McAllister, Wisconsin; died 10 February 2020) was an American composer and jazz pianist best known as the co-creator of the Pat Metheny Group. Mays and Metheny composed and arranged nearly all of the group's music, for which Mays won eleven Grammy Awards. Lyle helped distinguish the group’s sound with his sense of melody, crystal clear virtuosity, and cinematic scope of orchestration. As a student at the University of North Texas, Lyle composed and arranged all of the music for The One O'Clock Lab Band's Lab 75, the first ever album by a collegiate ensemble to be nominated for a Grammy. The list of musicians with whom he recorded and performed includes Joni Mitchell, Bobby McFerrin, Toots Thielemans, Earth, Wind & Fire, Jack DeJohnette, Bill Frisell, and Paul McCandless. Lyle received four additional Grammy nominations for his solo work. As a leader Lyle released seven albums: As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls (with Pat Metheny), Lyle Mays, Street Dreams, Fictionary, Solo Improvisations for Expanded Piano, The Ludwigsburg Concert, and Eberhard. Lyle’s final work, "Eberhard", his self-professed “humble tribute” to the great German bass player Eberhard Weber, was recorded just prior to his passing in early 2020, and won the Grammy for “Best Instrumental Composition” in 2021.