Jazz, with abundant Latin flair

By Jerry Fink (contact)

Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2009 | 2 a.m.

courtesy of FRANCESCO CABRAS

After two years at Berklee College of Music, jazz guitarist Al Di Meola joined Chick Corea’s group Return to Forever.

Al Di Meola is known for his rapid, complex riffs.

His lightning play has made him one of the most recognized and respected guitarists in the world, selected four times as the best jazz guitarist in Guitar Player Magazine’s reader poll.

A native of Jersey City, N.J., Di Meola first picked up a guitar at age 8 and has played it with passion ever since.

The master of technique is best known for his Latin-influenced works. “It was love at first sound,” he says. But he is adept at almost any sound.

“I grew up in great area outside New York City that helped me absorb a lot of different types of music,” Di Meola says.

He was straight out of the Berklee College of Music when he joined Chick Corea’s Return to Forever — one of the groundbreaking fusion groups that mixed jazz, rock and Latin music. He left in 1976 to begin a solo career, although he has engaged in successful collaborations with bassist Stanley Clarke, synthesizer player Jan Hammer, violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, and guitarists John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia.

His current group, Sinfonia ’09, blends accordion player Fausto Beccalossi from northern Italy, guitarist Peo Alfonsi from Sardinia and percussionist Gumbi Ortiz from Cuba.

Di Meola, 54, recently spoke to the Sun by phone as he and his group were traveling by car, leaving Jersey and heading to a concert in Virginia. From there, they were flying to Las Vegas for their performance at Santa Fe Station on Saturday night.

“I have played Vegas maybe 10 times,” Di Meola says. “It’s a very good town. My past shows there have been wonderfully received, a full house. In these tough economic times I hope for the same.”

He says the economy has not affected the turnout at his performances. “People still need to get out and live.”

1. Early influences

Probably my earliest influence was seeing Elvis on TV with a guitar. But my first guitar teacher was a jazz instructor. He was very versatile with jazz knowledge and teaching scale and harmony, which became a big influence on my whole development. Jazz wasn’t the direction I necessarily wanted to go, it’s just that my training was very well rounded between the theory of music — jazz, pop, all that.

2. Eclectic tastes

My liking for music was what was popular in that day so I was really into the Beatles when I was a kid. I absorbed a lot of the musical shows, anywhere from rock to jazz. And in my teenage years I really absorbed a lot of the Latin stuff that was coming out of New York, the different clubs that were there. Something drew me to the Latin sound, an inner yearning and desire and an inherent ability to feel the syncopated rhythms ... and to exhibit them through my own playing. I used to visit the Latin clubs in New York City by myself as a kid and just stand there and watch these Latin salsa big bands and absorb it. There was a connection to it that I can’t quite understand. I had it.

I wasn’t drawn to it with a bunch of buddies, I went alone. However, the other types of shows that I frequented in Greenwich Village — rock and jazz and pop concerts and everything — I used to go with a whole bunch of guys during my school years. It was all part of the whole training process. This was all before I went to the Berklee school of music in Boston when I was 17.

3. Rhythm in his veins

The feel for rhythm is something you’re either born with or can never have; you can’t really learn rhythm. You either have it or you don’t. You can learn harmony and you can learn other aspects of theory and music but rhythm is not something you can ever, ever learn, not really. I’m talking about the feeling of syncopated Latin rhythms.

4. Lightning technique

I think it developed because I started taking lessons as early as 8 years old and the training was in the scales, as opposed to a lot of kids learning rock music who were playing with their first and third finger — these kind of rock riffs. For me there was more emphasis on developing technique from an early age — plus my ability to read music was also kind of unique among my friends who were also involved with different bands at the time. The merging of my knowledge of jazz and my liking of all different rock elements was what enabled me to secure the job with Chick Corea and his band, Return to Forever. It was a gig that required you to have both schools merging, and the ability to read complex music. All that also required a great deal of technical ability to execute.

5. School of the road

Right out of high school I enrolled in the Berklee school of music. I think it was the next logical step for anyone serious about making music a career, to go to a place like Berklee, the right thing to do to get the next level of training. After two years there I wound up getting the gig with Chick Corea. I was still a student at Berklee but I quit. There was no point in going on. I went from a really important two years with the school, gaining the knowledge they had to offer, and then went into another three or four levels of knowledge by being on the road with someone who really inspired me to a whole other level and taking that knowledge and utilizing it. The thing about it is you grow much faster in the environment of great players. You grow the most by being on the road and playing every night.