Across the Universe Al Di Meola

• 1 Here Comes the Sun 03:27
• 2 Golden Slumbers Medley 06:18
• 3 Dear Prudence 04:35
• 4 Norwegian Wood 06:06
• 5 Mother Nature's Son 04:02
• 6 Strawberry Fields Forever 05:47
• 7 Yesterday 05:10
• 8 Your Mother Should Know 04:31
• 9 Hey Jude 04:51
• 10 I'll Follow the Sun 04:29
• 11 Julia 04:43
• 12 Till There Was You 04:38
• 13 Here, There and Everywhere 02:31
• 14 Octopus's Garden 00:46
• Total Runtime 01:01:54

Info for Across the Universe

Der legendäre Gitarrist Al Di Meola begrüßt das neue Jahrzehnt mit “Across The Universe”, dem neuen Studio-Album zu Ehren der Beatles. Es ist der lang erwartete Nachfolger seines 2013er Albums “All Your Life: A Tribute to the Beatles”.

Al Di Meolas außergewöhnliche Fähigkeiten am Griffbrett werden nur von seiner Wertschätzung der Beatles übertroffen, die Generationen von Musikern und Musikliebhabern inspiriert haben mit ihrer Fülle an zeitlosen Klassikern.

“Across The Universe” ist eine Retrospektive von Di Meolas fast 50-jähriger Karriere, die durch seine virtuosen Arrangements der 14 Beatles-Songs zum Ausdruck gebracht wird. Das Album entführt auf eine Reise mit einem der profiliertesten Gitarristen der USA, während er klassische Hits sowie obskurere Stücke der genialen Fab Four aufgreift, die auch dazu beigetragen haben, den Mann zu prägen, der Al Di Meola heute ist.

“Across The Universe” ist ein weiteres Meisterwerk, das er zu seinem Katalog von über 30 Solo-Alben und Kollaborationen mit Größen wie Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Stanley Clarke, Paco De Lucia und vielen weiteren hinzufügt. Auf ein Neues stellt er seine Faszination mit rhythmisch komplexen Synkopierungen in Kombination mit schwärmerischen Melodien und verschachtelten Harmonien zur Schau. Beatles-Fans, Gitarren- und Musikliebhaber können allesamt das Unerwartete erwarten, wenn sie sich auf die Reise in das Universum von “Across The Universe” begeben. Und mit Blick auf einzigartige Leben von John Lennon, stellt das Albumcover eine Hommage an den Musiker und das legendäre Cover seines 1975er Solo-Albums “Rock ‘n’ Roll” da.

Al Di Meola ist eine lebende Legende, gefeiert als Pionier eines einzigartigen Stils, geprägt von makelloser Gitarrentechnik in Kombination mit einer raffinierten, universellen Musiksprache, der die Herzen des Publikums auf der ganzen Welt erobert. Er ist GRAMMY-Award Gewinner, hat drei Alben mit Goldstatus und weltweit über sechs Millionen Alben verkauft. Auch seine Zusammenarbeit mit Künstlern wie Paul Simon, Phil Collins, Stevie Wonder, Jimmy Page, Santana, Steve Winwood, Herbie Hancock, Frank Zappa, Luciano Pavarotti hat dazu beigetragen Al Di Meola zu einem der ganz großen Namen zu machen.

Verschiedene Genres wie Flamenco, Latin, Fusion, Jazz, Rock und Weltmusik virtuos umspannend, hat Al Di Meola wieder eine Glanzleistung vollbracht, um die Grenzen neu zu definieren und zu zeigen, was auf einem 6-Saiter möglich ist. Wie bei allen seiner hochgelobten Werke, bietet er auch auf “Across The Universe” ein Arsenal an ausgeklügelten Instrumentierungen, mit dem er die kreativen Neuinterpretationen der Beatles-Songs in erstaunliche Höhen treibt.

„Es ist der Verdienst der Beatles, dass ich heute Gitarre spiele“, sagt Di Meola. „Sie waren für mich die treibende Kraft, um anzufangen das Gitarrenspiel zu lernen und hatten einen prägenden Einfluss auf mich.“

Al Di Meola zeigt auf “Across The Universe” seine ganze Bandbreite und bietet Orchestrierungen samt blitzschneller E-Gitarre, welche einen Ausgleich in aufwändigen akustischen Arrangements finden. Die Debüt-Single “Strawberry Fields Forever” ist ein temperamentvoller E-Gitarren-Track, der von einer treibenden Rockband unterstützt wird. Epische Rock’n’Roll-Cover sind über das gesamte Album verteilt, darunter eine fantastische Version des Album-Openers “Here Comes The Sun” sowie ein mitreißendes “Hey Jude” und “Golden Slumbers Medley”.

Di Meolas akustisches Finger-Picking steigt bei “Dear Prudence” und “Norwegian Wood” zur Höchstform auf, während er sich mit “Till There Was You” der Jazz-Fusion-Ästhetik widmet.

“Across The Universe” bietet mit “Mother Nature’s Son”, “Yesterday”, “Your Mother Should Know”, “I’ll Follow The Sun” und “Julia” ebenfalls eine Reihe von Midtempo-Grooves. Eine wundervolle Solo-Performance von Di Meola gibt es bei “Here, There And Everywhere” zu bestaunen. Das Album endet mit einer kurzen, aber sehr süßen melodischen Version von “Octopus’s Garden”.

Al Di Meola

Al Di Meola
Di Meola's ongoing fascination with complex rhythmic syncopation combined with provocative lyrical melodies and sophisticated harmony has been at the heart of his music throughout a celebrated career that has spanned four decades and earned him critical accolades, three gold albums and more than six million in record sales worldwide. A bona fide guitar hero, perennial poll-winner, and prolific composer, he has amassed over 20 albums as a leader while collaborating on a dozen or so others with the likes of the fusion supergroup Return to Forever (with Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Lenny White), the celebrated acoustic Guitar Trio featuring fellow virtuosos John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia, and the Rite of Strings trio with bassist Clarke and violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. And while his dazzling technique on both acoustic and electric guitars has afforded him regal status among the hordes of fretboard fanatics who regularly flock to his concerts, the depth of Di Meola's writing along with the soulfulness and the inherent lyricism of his guitaristic expression have won him legions of fans worldwide beyond the guitar aficionado set. ​

A pioneer of blending world music and jazz, going back to early Latin-tinged fusion outings like 1976's Land of the Midnight Sun, 1977's Elegant Gypsy and 1978's Casino, the guitar great continues to explore the rich influence of flamenco, tango, Middle Eastern, Brazilian and African music with his World Sinfonia, an ambitious pan-global group that he formed in 1991. Their exhilarating world music fusion has been documented on such releases as 2000’s The Grande Passion (featuring the Toronto Symphony Orchestra), 2007’s Live in London, 2011’s Pursuit of Radical Rhapsody and the stunning 2012 DVD, Morocco Fantasia (recorded at the Mawazine Festival in Rabat, Morocco and featuring special guests Said Chraibi on oud, Abdellah Meri on violin and Tari Ben Ali on percussion). ​

Growing up in Bergenfield, NJ with the music of Elvis Presley, The Ventures and The Beatles, Di Meola naturally gravitated to guitar as a youngster and by his early teens was already an accomplished player. Attaining such impressive skills at such a young age didn't come easy for Al, but rather was the result of focused dedication and intensive periods of woodshedding between his junior and senior years in high school. “I used to practice the guitar eight to ten hours a day,” he told Down Beat. “And I was trying to find myself, or find the kind of music that suited where I was going with the guitar.” ​

His earliest role models in jazz included guitarists Tal Farlow and Kenny Burrell. But when he discovered Larry Coryell, whom Al would later dub “The Godfather of Fusion,” he was taken with the guitarist's unprecedented blending of jazz, blues and rock into one seamless vocabulary on the instrument. “I used to ride the bus from New Jersey to see him at little clubs in Greenwich Village,” he recalls. “Wherever he was playing, I'd be there.” In 1972, Al enrolled at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and by the second semester there began playing in a fusion quartet led by keyboardist Barry Miles. When a gig tape of that band was later passed on to Chick Corea by a friend of Al's in 1974, the 19-year-old guitarist was tapped to join Corea’s fusion supergroup Return to Forever as a replacement for guitarist Bill Connors. After three landmark recordings with Return to Forever -- 1974's Where Have I Known You Before, 1975's Grammy Award winning No Mystery and 1976's Romantic Warrior -- the group disbanded and Al subsequently started up his career as a solo artist. His 1976 debut as a leader, Land of the Midnight Sun, was a blazing showcase of his signature chops and Latintinged compositions that featured a stellar cast including drummers Steve Gadd and Lenny White, bassist Anthony Jackson and Jaco Pastorius, keyboardists Jan Hammer, Barry Miles and Chick Corea and percussionist Mingo Lewis. Over the course of six more albums with Columbia Records – Elegant Gypsy, Casino, Splendido Hotel, Electric Rendezvous, Tour De Force and Scenario – Al established himself as an influential force in contemporary music. 1980 marked the triumph of the acoustic guitar trio with Paco De Lucia and John McLaughlin. Their debut recording on Columbia Records, Friday Night in San Francisco, became a landmark recording that surpassed the four million mark in sales. The following year, 1981, Di Meola was inducted into Guitar Player’s Gallery of Greats after five consecutive wins as Best Jazz Guitarist in the magazine’s Readers Poll and winning best album and acoustic guitarist for a total of a record eleven wins. The three virtuosos in the trio toured together from 1980 through 1983, releasing the studio album Passion, Grace & Fire in 1982. In 1995, they reunited for a third recording, Guitar Trio, follow by another triumphant world tour.

In early 1996, Di Meola formed a new trio with the violinist Jean-Luc Ponty and RTF bandmate Stanley Clarke called The Rite of Strings. Their self-titled debut was released in 1995. Di Meola subsequently recorded with the likes of opera superstar Luciano Pavarotti, pop stars Paul Simon, classical guitarist Manuel Barrueco, and Italian pop star Pino Daniele. Over the course of his career, he has also worked and recorded with Phil Collins, Carlos Santana, Steve Winwood, Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Herbie Hancock, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Milton Naciemento, Egberto Gismonti, Stevie Wonder, Les Paul, Jimmy Page, Steve Vai, Frank Zappa and Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba. ​

Di Meola’s 2013 release All Your Life was an acoustic tour de force that had him revisiting the music of a seminal influence – The Beatles. “I really credit the Beatles for the reason why I play guitar,” he says. “That was a major catalyst for me to want to learn music, so their impact was pretty strong.” A virtual one-man show of virtuosity, it features the guitar great interpreting 14 familiar Beatles tunes in the stripped-down setting of strictly acoustic guitar. ​

In 2015 he released Elysium, which finds the guitar great blending the lush tones of his nylon string Conde Hermanos acoustic prototype model and a ’71 Les Paul electric (his Return to Forever and Elegant Gypsy axe) in a collection of songs that are at once invigorating and alluring. “It represents a new composition phase for me, whereby the writing became, in a sense, my therapy during a challenging personal transition in my life," he said. In the same year he was honored as the 22nd recipient of the Montreal Jazz Festival’s Miles Davis Award, created in 1994 to honor a great international jazz musician for the entire body of his or her work and for that musician’s influence in regenerating the jazz idiom. ​

2018 marked a new era for Al Di Meola: His first of six signed projects with German record label ear music, “OPUS” was released in March. The Grammy award winning virtuoso says: “With Opus I wanted to further my compositional skills as I think that the evolution of this part of my persona has labelled me more composer/guitarist than guitarist/composer. For the first time in my life, I have written music being happy, I’m in a wonderful relationship with my wife, I have a baby girl and a beautiful family that inspires me every day. I believe it shows in the music.” In July 2018 Di Meola received the Honorary Doctorate Degree of Music of his former alma mater Berklee School of Music. ​

A retrospective of Al Di Meola’s nearly 50 year acclaimed career is expressed through his latest Ear Music release of March 2020 “ACROSS THE UNIVERSE” with his virtuosic arrangements and creative interpretations of 14 Beatles songs with lightning speed electric guitar orchestrations balanced with lavish acoustic arrangements.

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