Echoes Podcast: Peter Kater Interview & Lyle Mays Obit

Peter Kater's Hard Road to New Age Bliss & Lyle Mays Remembered

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Peter Kater & Lyle Mays

We talk with 2020 Grammy winning pianist Peter Kater
and we remember Lyle Mays of the Pat Metheny Group.

In the Echoes Podcast, pianist Peter Kater.  When a musician wins a Grammy award, you often don’t know what they went through to get there. Take the case pianist Peter Kater, who took home this years gramophone statue in the New Age category for the second time in his 4 decade career. He’s a leading figure in the new age field now, cutting over 60 albums since 1983, including acclaimed recordings with native flutist R. Carlos Nakai. But it didn’t start out well.

Peter Kater: I grew up in New Jersey and I had not a great childhood.  My mother was kind of a drama queen.  She married a guy who was abusive, an alcoholic and it was not fun.  She died of cancer right when I turned 18.  She was sick for about two years, and when she passed it was literally on the night of my birthday.  I was sorry for her death because I did love her, but I was so aware that I was set free of her drama and the life that I had been forced to participate in for the last, you know, 14 years. I was just out of there.  I just hit the road.  I put my thumb out and I just wanted to keep going. No money, nothing.  I had a backpack.

And now he’s just won his second Grammy Award for the album, Wings.. He’s known for music that can be sweetly romantic and deeply introspective. But there’s another side to this musician. We hitch a ride to the other side of Peter Kater in the Echoes Podcast.

Then we remember another pianist, Lyle Mays, pianist with the Pat Metheny Group and solo artist in his own right. His album with Metheny, As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls is a classic. John Diliberto looks back at his career.