Some have suggested his rag-mat of a hairstyle denotes a fusion between heavy metal and jazz, but Pat Metheny is a zealous advocate of a purer jazz cause.

The musician from Missouri formed his group in 1977 with keyboard virtuoso Lyle Mays and has since knocked up 14 Grammys, been a regular winner on Downbeat, Jazz Times, Jazziz, and Guitar Player critics' polls, and has successfully redefined the jazz guitar genre for our rock/dance orientated modern world.

"You always hear lots of doom and gloom when people talk about jazz these days," Pat says. "It seems like for a million reasons, people have these ideas that jazz is as not as popular as it once was, or there's not people playing it the way they used to.

"For me, as a fan, jazz is a process that allows people to find things about themselves through the spirit of the music.

"When I think about jazz, even the jazz that's being made right now - the incredible diversity of it and also the number of very high level of players that are still playing great - I can't be anything but optimistic about the future of the music, because there is so much good stuff going on."

Using all manner of instruments from synth guitars and sitars to fretless nylon boxes and the 42 string Pikasso guitar, Pat has tapped into the diversity of the genre over his long, commercially successful career.

He jumps from gentle crossover jazz with smoothsynthesizers to wild free jazz explorations, and constantly pushes his music into other stylistic areas.

He has appeared as a sideman on recordings by Joni Mitchell and Bruce Hornsby, collaborated with David Bowie on the hit single This is Not America, and released an album featuring 40 minutes of feedback noise - 1994cs Zero Tolerance For Silence - which was called "the most radical recording of this decade... a new milestone in electric guitar" by Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore.

Typically for a jazz maestro, Pat is also a dab hand at breathtaking flights of improvisation, melodic interplay and technical innovation, and somehow attracts an exceptionally diverse crowd.

"There's an incredible variety of people who show up, it really isn't just one crowd," he laughs.

"Some nights you look out and see some kid with, like, a mohawk, sitting right next to like, a 60-year-old very traditional jazz buff and his wife, sitting right next to a guitar freak with a note pad, sitting right next to whoever.

"There are incredibly wideranging tastes represented in the crowd, which I think probably reflects our thing.

"I always enjoy taking a look out there to see who's there that night and try to imagine which aspect of our thing has attracted them."

Starts 8.30pm, tickets cost £26. Call 01273 709709.