RSS
Home
Guitar great Al Di Meola jams in New York
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Al Di Meola (right) and Husnu Senlendirici jam at Drom
It’s not often that you get the chance to hear jazz fusion guitar great Al Di Meola jam in an intimate club in New York. So when I heard he’d be playing with Turkish clarinet virtuoso Husnu Senlendirici at Drom on Monday night, I high-tailed it down to Avenue A.
When I arrived, the club was full of guitar freaks and Turks. Everyone was dressed in dark colors, and, in the dim light, at first it was hard to tell who was who. But it soon became obvious. The Turkish men hugged each other heartily, while the American guitar freaks offered chilly handshakes. At small tables along the far wall, beautiful, dark-eyed women sat in pairs or singles, nursing drinks and chatting.
“Did you come to hear Husnu Senlendirici?” a smiling, young Turkish woman named Izge leaned over to ask me.
“I’m looking forward to hearing him, but it was Al Di Meola who drew me here,” I answered. Izge knew a lot about Turkish music, but she’d never heard of Al Di Meola. So I tried to fill her in.
In the guitar world, New Jersey-born Di Meola has long been legendary for his brilliant playing. Recruited when he was nineteen to join Chick Corea’s jazz-rock-fusion band Return to Forever in 1974, Di Meola immediately proved his chops and way more. Soon he was cutting albums that featured lightening-fast guitar licks and complex compositions of his own.
Early on, Di Meola got interested in world music. His 1977 album, Elegant Gypsy, included a duet with flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucía—years before the flamenco fusion craze took hold. Three years later he, John McLaughlin and de Lucía recorded Friday Night Live in San Francisco, the album that kicked off world fusion. Since then, Di Meola has collaborated with artists from many countries, and created some of the most rhythmically and harmonically sophisticated stuff out there. He’s been a tireless supporter of world music and venues that feature it like Drom. How like Di Meola to make a date to jam with Husnu Senlendirici, the Gypsy clarinet player who’s a major star in Turkey, but not—so far—on these shores.
As it turned out, Di Meola and Senlendirici were playing together for the very first time on Monday night. Serdar Ilhan, one of Drom's founders and the producer of it's annual Gypsy Music Festival, had arranged the meeting of the two virtuosos. Although familiar with each other’s work, they’d never met until a few hours before the jam, when they got together for a sound check.
“We don’t know exactly what we’re going to do. And that’s kind of a good thing,” Di Meola said, when he got up on the little stage around 10:00. “We’re going to improvise on some ideas. I hope we’ll have a good time and you will too.”
And then they were off, Senlendirici beginning with a theme on a very long, narrow clarinet, Di Meola and joining in, softly at first, on acoustic guitar. They were backed up by Hernan Romero on acoustic guitar, Panagiotis Andreou on bass, Engin Gunaydin on drums and Tamer Pinarbasi on kanun, a sort of zither.
The mood shifted from romantic and ballad-like to upbeat and fiery, then soulful and dark. Di Meola’s guitar ran through shadows and sunlight. Senlendirici’s clarinet sang like a human voice, sometimes gay, sometimes plaintive. There were moments when it sang with the wild abandon of a Manouche violin, conjuring Gypsy camps on the outskirts of wartime Paris, and moments when it sang as fiercely and daringly as Miles Davis. No matter how it sang, it was deeply and compellingly musical.
It was a pleasure to hear Di Meola play… and a pleasure to watch him. His foot, beating like a heart, propelled the music forward, his shoulders were loose, and the rhythms seemed to rise through his body as if he were galloping across a wide, open plane on a spirited stallion. Mostly, he kept his gaze on Senlendirici. The two--like new partners at a dance—were just getting to know each other. And it was thrilling to watch a musical relationship between two such fine artists unfold in real time, unrehearsed.
“What amazed me most was how naturally the two musicians blended their music…and with such little preparation!” Izge said later. And I agreed wholeheartedly.
Somehow, the syncopations of tango and rumba seemed as second nature to the Turkish clarinet player as the eastern tonalities and rhythms of Turkish music seemed to the American guitarist. It had all been filtered through the language of jazz fusion, of course. Thirty-some years after the fusion movement first got started, a generation of top musicians from around the world now have the vocabulary to jam together and really make it work.
There are many who deplore fusion. They say it is flashy but lacking in soul—that it represents a watering down of some of the greatest musical traditions the world has ever known. I have to admit there have been times when I’ve agreed. I’ve sat in concert halls while the rumbas of Paco de Lucía and his sextet seemed to fill the night with Novocaine and I would have traded the whole playlist for just one song, played simply but with real emotion by one of the old-time flamenco artists Paco worshipped when he was a boy.
But all prejudices must go by the wayside in the face of inspired music. When you’re sitting in a room with two artists as fine as De Meola and Senlendirici, feeling the frisson of their rhythms, you know talent can transcend all categories and you realize just how pointless labels can be.
“I’ve always wanted to play with this guy. We jammed for the first time just a few hours ago, before the show,” Di Meola told the audience at the end of the set.
Senlendirici spoke to the audience in Turkish, then turned to say something to Di Meola. “He’s telling me how to say thank you in Turkish,” Di Meola explained to the Americans in the crowd, “and believe me it’s so much easier in English!”
Later, I met the handsome young Turkish Gypsy backstage. Diamonds glittered in his ears and he sported a black clarinet tattoo on his left arm. “I’ve been performing since I was 14 years old, traveling around the world, meeting artists from every country,” he told me through a translator, flashing a beautiful smile. “We may not speak the same language, but we communicate through music.”
After the set was over, Di Meola didn’t head out, as most stars would. Instead he took a seat up front and listened intently, while Senlendirici and the band played a second set--their brand of Turkish fusion, mingled with Gypsy wedding music. I knew Di Meola was absorbing it all, deep into his fibers. And someday, it would pour out of him, transmuted into something sparkling and unique. I’d keep a lookout for his next album, I promised myself. And I’d make it a point to be there again, next time he decided to jam in New York City with another world-class musician.
As Izge and her friends snapped their fingers and danced in their seats, I imagined a Gypsy bride somewhere—maybe in a little village near the Black Sea—whirling to the music, faster and faster until she ascended into heaven.
Drom - 85 Avenue A - New York NY 10009 - 212-777-1157
Al Di Meola's next New York appearance:
Al Di Meola & World Sinfonia
January 10th 2009 at 8:00 pm
The Concert Hall
2 West 64th Street
NYC NY 10023
Related stories and websites:
Flamenco dancer Omayra Amaya sizzles in the Village - Examiner, 11-07-08
Bob Dylan plays a hard-driving set in Upper Manhattan - Examiner, 11-23-08
The Gypsies are coming! Drom's Gypsy Music Festival - Examiner, 9-23-08
Articles about Latin music - by Latin Music Examiner, Ian Malinow
Flamenco website - Deflamenco.com
Related Articles:
Comments
