2024-09-23 08:00:24
One of the world’s most renowned guitarists, the American Al Di Meola, opened the autumn part of the Brno JazzFest on Tuesday. In the framework of the tour called The Electric Years, he returned to the period when he mainly devoted himself to jazz-rock fusion and electric guitar. In the second half of the evening, however, he also played the acoustic guitar.
“The purpose of the tour is to return to the early recordings from the mid-70s,” explained 70-year-old Al Di Meola, who performed in Brno for the second time. The balanced character of the concert was underlined by photos from the stages and the family album, projected in a loop behind the musicians.
Di Meola played accompanied by bass guitar, keyboards, drums and percussion. There was music spanning 50 years, from Beyond the Seventh Galaxy from the repertoire of 1970s jazz supergroup Return to Forever to material from this year’s album Twentyfour. The full Sono Centrum was listening.
“Al Di Meola is a player with amazing technique, but also a pioneer of jazz fusions with rock and flamenco,” said Vilém Spilka, artistic director of the festival. According to him, the musician managed to combine jazz with the musical elements of the Mediterranean and Latin America. “In that sense, he did a similar job in guitar jazz as Carlos Santana did in guitar rock,” compares Spilka.
The American with Italian roots, who has won the Guitar Player magazine poll several times in the category for the best jazz guitarist, is extremely productive, having released around three dozen solo albums alone.
A graduate of Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music, he played in the band Return to Forever in the 1970s, with which he also won a Grammy Award. He then collaborated with many jazz and rock musicians, including the Czech keyboardist Jan Hammer. He tried various genres, including electronic music. With fellow guitar stars John McLaughlin and Pac de Lucía, he recorded the famous acoustic record Friday Night in San Francisco in 1981.
The autumn part of the Brno JazzFest will continue on September 29 at the same place with the celebration of 100 years of the Czech Radio studio in Brno. American trumpeter Randy Brecker will perform accompanied by the Gustav Brom Radio Big Band. In the end, the end of the autumn block will not be performed by the American saxophonist Kamasi Washington, who postponed the tour due to health reasons and will not play in Brno until March 18, 2025.
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