Pat Metheny returned to Missouri for two concerts this weekend, starting in Kansas City, not far from his home town of Lee's Summit, for a Friday night concert at the Uptown Theater. This time around, he brought with him his orchestrion. And, says the Kansas City Star, "Metheny's Orchestrion is nothing short of spectacular."

Star reviewer Bill Brownlee says the audience "audibly gasped" at first sight of the vast collection of instruments, solenoid switches, and pneumatic devices that comprise the orchestrion. Behind it all, of course, is the music Metheny makes from his own two hands. At one point, he showed the audience how he built a piece from scratch. "The insightful exercise," Brownlee reports, "showcased the compositional skills that helped make Metheny one of the most popular and acclaimed jazz musicians of the last several decades."

Read the complete concert review at kansascity.com.

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On Saturday, Metheny brought the machine and the music, to St. Louis, for a performance at the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center. Like the Kansas City audience, "the crowd was clearly eager to hear the orchestrion," reports St. Louis Post-Dispatch reviewer Calvin Wilson, "and Metheny got down to business with aplomb."

Wilson felt the title track off Metheny's latest album, Orchestrion, "showcased what is perhaps Metheny’s greatest artistic asset: his ability to create music that’s at once adventurous and accessible." And though Metheny, in that spirit of accessibility, was sure to walk the audience through the workings of the orchestrion, "the music spoke for itself," says Wilson, "and eloquently."

Read more at stltoday.com.

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Up next on the Orchestrion tour is a performance tonight at Chicago's Orchestra Hall. "Simply put," explains Time Out Chicago's Mark Bieganski in a preview of tonight's show, "the famed jazz guitarist has raised the bar for inventiveness, which says a lot for a career stretching over three decades."