Congratulations for being the first person to react to this great album! Just in case you are interested, it took Pat and Lyle 6 weeks to write the first two thirds of this album. Notice how they changed from their earlier music yet remained identifiable. This album gets better the more you know it. The live performance of this song is excellent.

This is Mozart/Bach level in modern language.

This genre is called Metheny/Mays music 👌🏼

Years ago I had a chat with Antonio Sanchez about this record and he said that it was one the most challenging things he has ever done.
Three years ago, Pat and his quartet at the time (Antonio, Gwilym Simcock and Linda May Han Oh) went to see me live at a joint in Rio and it was one of the most intense gigs of my life .
The way up led to a tour that featured my good friend Nando Lauria and we talked a lot about the rehearsals.
Thanks for the reaction, man!

You have to check out the Secret Story album by Pat Metheny

Beatiful reaction a masterpiece... For me, "The Way Up" is the best ending that PMG could have created to bring the curtain down. It's the work they'd been searching for their entire history... I can't imagine what else they could have done after this...

I saw Pat and Lyle on this tour. It was crazy. CRAAAAYYZEEEEE!!

LOL ... @Sohum, your comment about the short attention span was dead on, this album was a protest against the shortening of musical attention spans

What a shame this was the final album that the Pat Metheny Group recorded. But I think they saved the best till last... it's difficult to see where they could have gone musically after TWU. It's their magnum opus, after which nothing more needed to be said.

In any event, Pat and Lyle were by this time living at opposite ends of the country. They collaborated on writing TWU over the internet. After TWU, Lyle left music altogether to involve himself with software products. He passed away in 2020 at the age of 66 from an unspecified illness.

Pat has spent the last couple of decades playing with a huge range of musicians, trios and bands. His current project is called Side-Eye, which he founded specifically to gain exposure for younger musicians. Side-Eye have a new album out this Tuesday (27th).

Thanks for a great reaction. When I sat down and listened to TWU for the first time I was absolutely stunned, as obviously you were. There is no other musical experience like it.

And finally, yes played the whole thing live, with variations in the improv sections of course

The score is around 250 pages of music and they were played just from memory during the tour. Still the best concert of Pat (I saw 11, the next will be in June SideEye 3+) I ever saw.  After The Way Up the concert lasted for another at least 90 minutes, it was so amazing….

The very end feels like a deep connection with Lyle. And it's good. RIP Maestro 🕯

To me, this is the one PMG album that is juuuust fascinating, and just the perfect way for PMG to end their journey on such a high note, creatively speaking. You need to listen more than one, two, three, four or even more to just begin to understand the true beauty of this composition. And everytime I listen to it, I find new things, new nuances, new harmonies, intricacies etc and it just pulls me even further to admire its beauty. If I could only have 1 album to have and play in a deserted island, it's this one, no brainer!! ❤❤❤

Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays, wow -- but Antonio Sanchez holds this all together with amazing percussion skills!

I’ve only listened to a handful of PM’s many albums, but this one is a favorite. A sublime ride.

Lyle said that The Way Up tour was the single most difficult thing he’d ever done and that it essentially broke his brain, lol. When I saw this tour in 2005, I had the powerful feeling that this was not only the culmination of everything they’d ever done but was going to be basically PMG’s last tour/swan song. I don’t know that they realized this would be the case, but Lyle retired from PMG immediately after the tour at age 50 and dedicated the rest of his relatively short life to mathematical explorations @ CalTech (though he still was involved in music to a certain extent, and PMG did do a very short “Pat Metheny Group Songbook” tour overseas, with Lyle’s rig SIGNIFICANTLY scaled down).

To see this live back in 2005 was earth-moving. I had to buy the DVD! How they retained all of that in one large 3-part song was amazing. The songs are not easy songs to play. Incredible doesn't do it justice. As a musician myself, I went home and set fire to all my instruments. LOL. This is a work that, when I want to be stimulated musically, I can find that mode with "The Way Up" and "Speaking of Now", not to mention the PMG works from decades before. You are now one of the enlightened ones. Only the worthy can appreciate this mastery.  So glad to find your page! Thanks for this!

I couldn't click on this video fast enough. PMG is my favorite group and I love this album. I can't describe this album. I can't listen to just one part. The album is one long piece of music. I was lucky enough to have a front row center seat to see this whole album performed live, no breaks. Thank you for reacting to this album. To repeat someone's earlier comment, I think you're the first one to do it.

Pat Metheny is like the Pink Floyd of jazz music.

As I first heard this more than 20 years ago I thought "What is this?" A little later I recognized that this is one of the best Albums that have ever been recorded. Unfortunately the Last album of PMG. A real masterpiece!
The concert of this tour in 2005 was one of the most impressive of my life.