Lyle Mays

Lyle Mays is a celebrated American jazz pianist who has picked up eleven Grammy Awards as a member of the Pat Metheny Group, for whom he composed and arranged most of the music. He has released two solo albums, 'Lyle Mays' (1986) and 'Solo: Improvisations for Expanded Piano' (2000), which went to number 33 on the Billboard Jazz Albums Chart. He has performed and recorded as the Lyle Mays Quartet with Marc Johnson on bass, Bob Sheppard on saxophone and Mark Walker on drums including a two-disc release, 'The Ludwigsburg Concert' (2016) recorded live in 1993. Born in Wisconsin to a musical family, he learned to play the piano as a child and played the organ in church as a teenager. He graduated from the University of North Texas where he composed and arranged music for its celebrated One O'Clock Lab Band. Following a stint with the Woody Herman band, he joined Pat Metheny in founding the guitarist's group, which went on to enjoy enormous success. With Metheny, he wrote the music for the Steppenwolf Theater Company of Chicago's stage production of 'Orphans' and for John Schlesinger's 1985 feature film 'The Falcon and the Snowman' starring Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn. He wrote 'Twelve Days in the Shadow of a Miracle', a classical piece recorded by the Debussy Trio in 1996 and composed music for releases for children including 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit' (1992) read by Meryl Streep. On 10th February 2020 Mays passed away aged 66 following a long battle with illness.

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