Lyle David Mays was an American jazz pianist, composer, and member of the Pat Metheny Group. Metheny and Mays composed and arranged nearly all of the group's music, for which Mays won eleven Grammy Awards.
Biography
While growing up, Mays had four main interests: chess, mathematics, architecture, and music. His parents were musically inclined – his mother Doris played piano and organ, his father, Cecil, a truck driver, taught himself to play guitar – and he was able to study the piano with the help of instructor Rose Barron. She allowed Mays the opportunity to practice improvisation after the structured elements of the lesson were completed. At age 9 he played organ at a family member's wedding, and at age 14 he began to play the instrument in church. In summer camp he was introduced to jazz pianist Marian McPartland. Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival and Filles de Kilimanjaro by Miles Davis were important influences. He graduated from the University of North Texas after attending the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire. He composed and arranged for the One O'Clock Lab Band and was the composer and arranger for the Grammy Award-nominated album Lab 75. After leaving North Texas, Mays toured with Woody Herman's group for approximately eight months. In 1975, he met Pat Metheny with whom he founded the Pat Metheny Group. Mays won eleven Grammy Awards with the Pat Metheny Group and was nominated for four others for his own work. In an interview with JAZZIZ magazine in 2016, Mays revealed his career as a music software manager because of the drastic change in the music industry.
Work
Mays composed and arranged as a member of the Pat Metheny Group, playing piano, organ, keyboards, synthesizer, and occasionally trumpet, accordion, agogô bells, autoharp, toy xylophone, and electric guitar. He composed and recorded children's audio books, such as East of the Sun, West of the Moon,Moses the Lawgiver,The Lion and the Lamb,The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, and Tale of Peter Rabbit with text read by Meryl Streep. Metheny's and Mays' compositions were performed by the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago in a production of Orphans by Lyle Kessler. He composed classical music, such as "Twelve Days in the Shadow of a Miracle", a piece for harp, flute, viola, and synthesizer recorded in 1996 by the Debussy Trio. Apart from the Metheny group, he performed in a trio with Marc Johnson and Peter Erskine and formed the Lyle Mays Quartet with Eric Hochberg, Mark Walker, and Bob Sheppard. An amateur architect, he designed his sister Joan's house and was influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Death
Mays died in Los Angeles, at the age of 66, on February 10, 2020 "after a long battle with a recurring illness".
Discography
As leader
As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls with Pat Metheny
