Trumpet/flugelhorn soloist Mike Metheny is a native of Lee’s Summit, Missouri and has degrees from the University of Missouri/Columbia (B.S. in Music Education) and Northeast Missouri State University (Masters in Music Education). His teachers included Keith House and John Alexander.
From 1971 to 1974, he was a trumpeter in the U.S. Army Field Band in Washington D.C., and in 1976 he became a faculty member at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, a position he held for six years. At Berklee, Mike taught private trumpet, music theory and jazz improvisation and, while in Boston from 1976 to 1989, led his own Boston-based jazz quartet, appearing in numerous club, concert and festival settings across New England and the U.S.
Mike is a recipient of the “Outstanding Brass Player” award at the annual Boston Music Awards. He has also appeared on numerous jazz recordings as a sideman and has released twelve albums as a leader/producer: Blue Jay Sessions (1982, Headfirst Records), Day In – Night Out (1986, MCA/Impulse), Kaleidoscope (1988, MCA/Impulse), From Then ‘Til Now (1992, Altenburgh Records), Street of Dreams (1996, Altenburgh Records), and Close Enough For Love (2001), KC Potpourri (2003), Back to Basics (2004), 60.1 (2010) and Old Wine/New Bossa: Selected Tracks (2011), A Kansas City Trumpet Summit (2013) and Twelve For the Road (2015), all on Mike’s 3 Valve Music label.
Since 1989, Mike has been a freelance performer, educator and music journalist in the Kansas City area and has written liner notes for such notables as jazz vocalist Marilyn Maye (Supersinger: A Tribute to Johnny Carson). He has also contributed to KC Magazine, Jazziz, and The DaCapo Jazz & Blues Lover’s Guide to the U.S., is a former editor (1994-2003) of Kansas City’s Jazz Ambassador Magazine (JAM), and is the current chairman of the Metheny Music Foundation.