Second Plectrum Podcast - Al Di Meola - One of my guitar heroes.

Welcome back for my second podcast. This one is much better I believe as I used an external microphone for the voice recording and its much clearer.
Well this time I wanted to introduce to some of you at least, the talents of Al Di Meola. He's American born but has Italian roots, which probably explains why two of his collaborations are with Italian artitsts. His style is very versatile and quite difficult to describe. It verges from Jazz to Latin / Spanish though describing it as Latin Jazz is not good enough a description. In future podcasts I will bring to you more tracks by this giant of guitar music. In this podcast I limited myself to tracks in which Al Di Meola collaborated with other artists.

Podcast description:

Track 1. TANGO - Al Di Meola with Leonid Agutin from the Album Cosmopolitan Life. All the album is excellent stuff which I would recommend to anyone even those uninitiated in this type of music. The Russian singer, Agutin, sometimes sounds like Sting and some songs verge on the commercial style which makes the album accessible to a vaster audience. This particular track starts off with some brilliant guitar work by Al Di Meola accompanied by a sumptuous brass accompaniment.

Track 2. INFINITE DESIRE - Al Di Meola with Italian singer and guitarist Pino Daniele. This is the only track in the album with the same name, Infinite Desire, featuring Pino Daniele. It is a beautiful love song, very romantic. Pino lets Al take centre stage on the guitar and uses his other marvellous musical instrument - his voice.

Track 3. THE SOUND OF SILENCE - From the album Armentos - Al Di Meola with Sardinian singer Andrea Parodi (remember Tazenda - Spunta La Luna Dal Monte - with Pierangelo Bertoli?) Its their long haired, very skinny singer. Anyway I left this track for the end because one either loves or hates this unique voice of Andrea Parodi...I did not want you to be scared away immediately after starting listening to the first track! The voice grows on you though while one cannot but love Al Di Meola's guitar work especially in the intro, sounding more like El Condor Pasa - but then eventually evolving into The Sound of Silence.

For newcomers please follow this tutorial.



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