Al Di Meola comes to the Barns at Wolf Trap with World Sinfonia for two evenings of unsurpassed creativity. Fans are advised to snap up tickets for each show, both very different with content from his vast catalog of work. It takes only the opening piece, “Siberiana” to convince the listener that this recording, due out the day Di Meola arrives in town, is special. He plays both acoustic and electric guitar backed by World Sinfonia regulars, along with Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, percussionist Mino Cinelu, drummer Peter Erskine and Hungary’s Sturcz String Quartet.
| Onstage |
| Al Di Meola and World Sinfonia |
| Where: The Barns at Wolf Trap |
| When: 8 p.m. March 15 and 16 |
| Info: $35; 800-WOLFTRAP (965-3872); wolftrap.org |
Each of the 15 tracks celebrates Di Meola’s virtuosity and his highly complex relationship with the guitar strings. The sounds he tempts from his instruments can be otherworldly, perhaps the cry of a solitary human voice one moment, the echo of mystical chimes the next.
“Learning acoustic guitar is a graduation process to play with any kind of clarity and technical ability,” he said. “I come from a rhythm background in which the electric guitar offers more lyrical melodies, but you can’t hide behind an acoustic guitar. When I compose at my studio in Miami Beach, I play basic arpeggio patterns until it becomes interesting to me and a melody arises. Then I add the bass part and two percussion parts. The rule is to never start with a melody.”
Di Meola burst onto the scene playing in Chick Corea’s Return to Forever fusion band, soon moving out on his own as soloist and valued collaborator with the likes of John McLaughlin, Larry Coryell, Stanley Clarke and Jean-Luc Ponty.
Intricate fingering and sophisticated syncopation anchor his latest masterpiece. “Siberiana” is followed by “Paramour’s Lullaby.” They establish the standard for the entire recording.
“I started ‘Siberiana’ while we were touring in Siberia and taking long, grueling trips through Russia on the bus,” he said. “It’s the first piece we rehearsed for this project and it proved to be a perfect blend.”
The latter two numbers, the fiery “Gumbiero” and “Fireflies” feature stirring drumming. In contrast, the lush melodies of “Michelanglo,” “That Way Before” and the familiar “Strawberry Fields” and “Over the Rainbow” display Di Meola’s sweet, soft side.
“I was a Beatles fan from the beginning, so ‘Strawberry Fields’ is for them,” he said. ” ‘Over the Rainbow’ is a small tribute to a large person, Les Paul, who recently died and was like my second dad. Sometimes music has a stormy content that men prefer, but when I moved into the European tradition of sentimentality, that didn’t come at the expense of intelligence. Today when I sign after a show, there are as many women as men waiting in line.”
