April Joy is a jazz fusion tune by the Pat Metheny Group, released in 1978 on their ECM debut Pat Metheny Group. The track runs 8 minutes 14 seconds and appears as the third piece on Side II of the album. The lineup features Pat Metheny on guitars and Lyle Mays on keyboards, with Mark Egan on bass and Danny Gottlieb on drums. A notable moment occurs in bar 7 with an A/Bb sonority that listeners and theorists discuss as a diminished tonic or a colorized Bb major chord, used as a temporary sidestep from the main Bb Lydian tonality. The early section blends composed material with improvisation, followed by a spacious bridge of arpeggios that leads to a climactic, Phase Dance–like finish. The track is part of an album that helped establish the Pat Metheny Group’s sound in the late 1970s, produced by Manfred Eicher for ECM and recorded in Oslo in January 1978.
