“I’ve done a lot of things that didn’t feel natural in my career!” As I once again face the tyranny of the blank page, that sentence reverberates through my consciousness. It was uttered by the guitarists' guitarist, Al Di Meola to his somewhat recalcitrant drummer Luis Alicea. “It doesn’t make dynamic sense for me to go here at this point,” Alicea said gesturing meekly at his ride. “It just doesn’t feel natural.” Undeterred, Mr. Di Meola loosed the above provocation and Mr. Alicea acquiesced to the unassailable logic of the moment.
As I eavesdropped, fly-on-the-wall style at soundcheck, I was struck by how incredibly involved Al Di Meola is in every aspect of how his music is presented. Not uncommon for someone acting as Music Director I suppose, but this was a whole other level of thing for me to witness, Dear Reader. Mr. Di Meola began “singing” the drum parts back to the bemused Alicea until finally, after several minutes, a satisfactory balance was struck. There was no trace of frustration between the men; rather a shared, fierce determination that the part must “feel good to play and hear.” At the time of the actual performance of the song in question though, there was no trace of any of the difficulty herein described. It was all smiles… all the time.