Mike Metheny is a native of Kansas City, Missouri and has music degrees from the University of Missouri and Northeast Missouri State University. From 1971 to 1974, he was a trumpeter in the U.S. Army Field Band in Washington D.C. and in 1976 he became a faculty member at Boston's Berklee College of Music, a position he held for six years. While in Boston from 1976 to 1989, Mike led his own Boston- based jazz quartet, appearing in numerous club, concert and festival settings across New England and the U.S.