Al Di Meola is a guitarist’s guitarist whose peers have long recognized his genius. In a career spanning four decades, he is considered a pioneer in the blending of world music and jazz. Di Meola has earned four gold albums, two platinum albums, and countless awards, including induction into Guitar Player’s Gallery of Greats and the prestigious Montreal Jazz Festival’s Miles Davis Award. That 2015 honor celebrates an artist’s body of work and influence in giving new life to the jazz idiom. It would have been the capstone for many careers, but Di Meola was just getting started.
The artist grew up in New Jersey and played the guitar as a kid. When he discovered the music of Larry Coryell, whom Di Meola calls “The Godfather of Fusion,” he fell in love with jazz, blues and rock blended together. He enrolled in the Berklee College of Music and when a band tape was passed along to Chick Corea, the 19-year- old was asked to join his supergroup, Return to Forever. The young man was on his way.
Di Meola has a reputation for rehearsing for hours on end, a regimen he began early on. “When I went to Berklee, I wanted to make it,” he said. “I thought I should practice as much as possible. Now I find it meditative and relaxing. My first professional gig with Chick Corea was at Carnegie Hall. I got a call, and I was in shock. It was a dream come true. I told my parents I was playing Carnegie Hall and my father thought I was joking. I was nervous beyond belief, and it was the opportunity of a lifetime. The musicians were already legends, even then, and Return to Forever was my favorite band. They had a strong belief in me, but I didn’t have it yet.
Di Meola has had success with both the acoustic and electric guitar, and he loves them both. For the past 20 years, he has played more acoustic guitar, a legacy of the type of ear damage many musicians have. The strong acoustic following he had from his early years cushioned the transition back to acoustic. “Playing acoustic separates the men from the boys,” he said. “You can’t get away with a lot. With electric, there’s the volume, and you can get away with being sloppy.
Di Meola has eclectic tastes, and he is a fan of the work of the composer and musician Astor Piazzolla and the Beatles. “Piazzolla was the father of modern tango and I’ve done a lot of his work,” Di Meola said. “We had become good friends and his influence was extreme.”
In fact, Piazzolla and Di Meola were going to embark on a project together just before the former’s death in 1992. Di Meola has recorded an album of Piazzolla’s work. “Not a day goes by that I’m not involved in thinking about Piazzolla or The Beatles,” he said. “When we first heard The Beatles music, there had been nothing like it. They had an amazing evolution in the 1960s and just got better and better…I realized their music was incredible and way ahead of its time, with an aesthetic beauty that is overshadowed as they’re just thought of as a pop band. They had a lot of depth. “I really credit The Beatles for the reason why I play the guitar,” he said. “That was a major catalyst for me to want to learn music, so their impact was pretty strong.”
Di Meola’s 2013 release, All Your Life, recorded at Abbey Road Studios, had him revisiting the music of The Beatles. A virtual one-man show, it features Di Meola interpreting 14 Beatles tunes in the stripped-down setting of strictly acoustic guitar.
In 2017, Di Meola released OPUS, an album where Di Meola wanted to return to composition. “When I started, I was a guitar player trying to be a composer,” he said. “Now I am a composer…guitar player. I have 300 very involved compositions that say I am a composer. I am very proud.”
In 2024, Di Meola released his latest double studio album, Twentyfour, which was met with critical acclaim and praise. Written during the pandemic, what started as a simple acoustic project evolved into something grander. Over the span of four years, Twentyfour became a journey through the artist’s musical evolution. The album further cements his reputation as a guitar virtuoso, visionary composer and innovator. He is, quite simply, at the top of his game.
At this season of his life, Di Meola finds himself in a good, if unexpected place. He has a happy marriage and a young child. He believes his happiness is reflected in his music for the first time in his life.
For Al Di Meola, this is the best of times. He’ll follow the sun and see where it takes him and us.
