Seventeen-time Grammy Award-winner Pat Metheny has collaborated with Joni Mitchell, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, John Scofield, Ornette Coleman, Brad Mehldau and Charlie Haden, as well as Polish jazz singer Anna Maria Jopek and Spanish flamenco singer Enrique Morente.

But Metheny's new project, "Orchestrion," required him to collaborate with a team of inventors.

The jazz guitarist is bringing to contemporary stages a new device based on a musical brainstorm from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The idea was to create a machine that plays music designed to sound like an orchestra.

Metheny's "New Orchestrion" encompasses an ensemble of acoustic instruments, including pianos, a drum kit, marimbas, dozens of percussion instruments and even cabinets of carefully tuned bottles. Working with a team of inventors, all the instruments were created and linked by Metheny. Instruments are struck and plucked, or played using solenoid switches and pneumatics.

Despite his long record of collaborations, Metheny will perform alone at Kingsbury Hall on his unique instrument.

"I love Utah," said Metheny, who in January released his album "Orchestrion." "Every time I have played there, the audiences have been great and it has been a great experience. I am so excited to get the chance to come back there and present this unique project."

In an e-mail interview, Metheny, 55, talks about the origin of his latest project, as well as the rewards of experimentation.

The genesis of this project comes from my grandfather's basement. Among the instruments in his collection was a player piano from the late 1800s and the early 1900s. ... I used to get under there and get a flashlight and try to figure out how it worked. I've always been interested in instruments like that. I've gone to many museums and gone to lots of exhibits and various concerts where people have presented player pianos and orchestrions of that era, and I've kind of tucked that away somewhere, and always imagined that it might be fun to try to look at those instruments through the prism of everything else that I've done in terms of harmony, and in terms of melody.Over the past several years, I've gone to a number of different inventor guys to build, essentially, this orchestra that you hear, all custom-made instruments just for this project.

with inventors to develop and assemble the "New Orchestrion," what challenges and rewards did you encounter?

The experience of committing to this, then writing music for the instruments, and then preparing for a extensive tour, has been unbelievably challenging in every way. Besides the huge mass of technical things that I had to formulate and implement, I also had to examine my own views about music from many different angles. Honestly, I am not interested in any music that doesn't groove or does not reflect spirit and soulfulness. Had I not been able to reconcile my standards of what is contained in those needs with the realities of what this setting offered, I would have bagged it. However, once the instruments came in and I started to figure out what was really possible with them, that thought never again crossed my mind. Before the tour started, I was very curious to see what the early audience reactions were. What I have really liked is that it gets people talking. Everyone has an opinion and thoughts about this. ... The whole thing for me is [a] new medium to tell stories.

This has been a rewarding and deeply educational and thought-provoking project on every level. It has made me a better musician and composer in many, many ways. There have been lots of things that I have had to learn about a whole bunch of things regarding physics, mechanics and electricity that I didn't know that much about before. But in the end, it is all about the music for me. Music is inherently difficult when being addressed with high aspirations. That challenge far outweighs all the others.