Patrick Bruce Metheny was born August 12, 1954, in Lee's Summit, Missouri; his father played trumpet, his mother sang, and his maternal grandfather was a professional trumpeter. His first instrument was trumpet, taught to him by his brother Mike, before he switched to guitar. By fifteen he was working regularly with the best jazz musicians in Kansas City; at eighteen he became the youngest teacher ever at the University of Miami, and at nineteen the youngest ever at Berklee College of Music.

Metheny first reached international attention in 1974 during a three-year stint with vibraphonist Gary Burton, developing the trademark style that blended the loose, flexible articulation typically reserved for horn players with an advanced rhythmic and harmonic sensibility. His debut album, Bright Size Life (1975), reinvented the traditional jazz guitar sound for a new generation of players. The Pat Metheny Group won its first Grammy for 1982's Offramp and went on to win an unprecedented seven consecutive Grammys for seven consecutive albums.

Metheny has won 20 Grammy Awards across 12 different categories, including Best Rock Instrumental, Best Contemporary Jazz Recording, Best Jazz Instrumental Solo, and Best Instrumental Composition. He was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 2013, joining only three other guitarists: Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian, and Django Reinhardt. His 1980 album 80/81 featured bassist Charlie Haden, whose own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile.

Metheny's guitar sound, warm-toned and horn-like in its phrasing, combined with an unusually adventurous willingness to move between straight-ahead jazz, fusion, and near-classical composition, made him one of the most recognizable and commercially successful jazz guitarists of his generation.