Al Di Meola
Di Meola Plays Piazzolla

THE REVIEW

Photo albums are strange things. You always see colorful photos as reminders of good times and never see photos of sad moments, ending up forgetting that it was precisely those gray and forgotten moments that ferried you from the joy captured in one photo to the next.
Trying to go beyond a simple photo album. That's what Di Meola must have thought while rearranging Piazzolla's pieces in a very personal way and writing in his own hand the funeral homage to the accordionist, closing the regret with a celebratory song (Last Tango For Astor) in memory of the departed friend.

From the feeling that oozes from every note played in the album, it is deduced that the relationship that linked the guitarist to Astor Piazzolla must have truly been filled with profound experiences, just as profound their sincere friendship must have been. Intense colored snapshots, speckled with discouraging and melancholic passages, testimony of the pain left in the guitarist's soul by the friend's departure. A desperate search for an impossible symmetry between the celebration of Piazzolla's playful creativity and the emergence of sadness for the premature end of a mutual admiration that could have given so much more to both.
A photo album should not contain gray photos so that anguish does not darken memories. But Di Meola, gripped by a palpable nostalgia, cannot erase, does not want to erase the dismay he feels while he weaves new sparkling ornaments into the fabric laid by the Argentine author. A collection of gems cannot bring to life the composer from Mar De Plata but can trace the necessary lines for his worthy remembrance.

Yes, photo albums really are strange. And so are the logics that lead you to buy an album. It was enough for me to read the album title, a simple juxtaposition of proper names, to ignite in me the desire to listen to it, an obsessive-compulsive behavior which I now thank for having had.
I open this album, scroll through the photos and the nostalgia poured from the American's guitar infects my soul. I am sad while I am happy. Or perhaps it is enough to tell you that, while the echo of the last notes of "Miloga del Angel" fades, I am. Captured by tango, at that moment "I am" and that's it.