Latin music has been a strong influence on
Al Di Meola since his early years, and in the '90s, he paid especially close attention to the music of Argentina. A welcome addition to his already impressive catalog,
Di Meola Plays Piazzolla pays homage to the late Argentine tango master
Astor Piazzolla (whose distinctive and very poetic brand of romanticism was considered quite daring and radical in Argentina). It would have been easy for an artist to allow his own personality to become obscured when saluting
Piazzolla's legacy, but the charismatic
Di Meola is too great an improviser to let that happen. Though his reverence for
Piazzolla comes through loud and clear on these haunting classics, there's no mistaking the fact that this is very much an
Al Di Meola project. ~ Alex Henderson