The total six-string package

The Pat Metheny Trio performed two sold-out shows at the State Theatre in Virginia on Feb. 19. The always intelligent, always passionate, always energetic concert was, at its essence, always Metheny.

The show began with a selection of solo acoustic compositions, something that Metheny has been experimenting with over the past few years. The first tune he played, which was apparently its world premier, was a mournful, major/minor, baritone guitar piece in a fingerpicked, almost folky style. It was followed by a piece in a strummed, rock-and-roll vein, employing trancelike Middle-Eastern scales and drone notes. The richness of Metheny's tone was incredible, with almost choral sounding reverb and depth.

Then came the 42-string Picasso guitar, on which Metheny played "So May I Secretly Begin." Attached to the instrument's enormous body were two unequal necks and a harp (tuned like a Chinese harp), enabling Metheny to play colorful chords, resonant bass notes and sparkling harp runs simultaneously. The piece was hypnotizingly eastern sounding, not to be confused with New Age, and as it crescendoed with powerful harp runs, the band came in.

The next four songs were classic Metheny. From his semi-hollow guitar flowed lyrical melodies, warm chords, blistering bebop and bluesy twists. Bassist Christian McBride (who will be playing at the Kennedy Center in May) and drummer Antonio Sanchez were not to be outdone. McBride's playing was assertive, and the group refused to sacrifice intensity during his lightning-fast solos. Sanchez's drumming was like water in kettle, sometimes simmering, sometimes boiling over and always with a fire underneath it. His solos were polyrhythms on polyrhythms, hard to count but even harder not to tap your foot to.

The group let the music cool for a bit for a composition inspired by the destruction in the Gulf Coast. Metheny, playing his nylon guitar simply and poignantly, sounded like Bill Frisell at his least experimental. McBride contributed a mournful bowed solo, calm eye in the center of a storm.

The final piece came like a hurricane-force gust. Metheny finally picked up his solid-body ax and there was no going back. Using a hornlike synth, Metheny played soaring, careening lines, the rhythm section matching his intensity. From an almost overwhelming level of saturation, the piece came down to a smoldering, electronic freak-out, reminiscent of the outer-space bridge on Pink Floyd's "Echoes," and it eventually burnt out.

What gives Metheny his unique voice is his ability to seamlessly merge styles and timbres. Unlike many of his contemporaries who play jazz guitar, Metheny plays jazz on the guitar. He doesn't play jazz-rock, progressive, or world fusion. He plays jazz, rock, classical, folk and world music all at once. He avoids synthesis in favor of addition. It would be difficult for anyone not to find something he or she likes in his style because it is all styles, because he plays music rather than guitar. Perhaps that is how a guy who dresses like Napoleon Dynamite has become the most popular and celebrated jazz guitarist today.