Al Di Meola Brings Virtuosic Jazz Sound to The Suffolk

When people think of guitar virtuosos, names like Eric Johnson, Steve Vai and Joe Satriani are some of the first ones that come to mind, among other rock players. But jazz is no stranger to six-string masters.

Among these highly talented jazz guitarists is Al Di Meola. Known for his blazing fast picking speeds and unparalleled accuracy, Di Meola burst onto the jazz fusion scene in the 1970s as a member of Return To Forever before turning his primary focus to acoustic work.

Now, he’ll be taking his talents to The Suffolk on Thursday, June 26, at 8 p.m. for an evening of jazz exploration.

Born and raised in New Jersey, Di Meola first started taking guitar lessons when he was 10 years old in the mid-1960s. Guitar-driven rock groups like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones dominated the landscape, but his teacher introduced him to jazz techniques, giving Di Meola mix of both of these contrasting musical worlds.

“He would teach me a lot of elements of jazz theory and emphasis on reading, improvisation and things related to jazz,” he said in a recent phone interview. “But at the same time, he also appreciated the music of The Beatles and a lot of the pop stuff that had beautiful harmonic changes.”

Inspired by these lessons and bluegrass guitarists like Clarence White from The Byrds and Doc Watson, Di Meola crafted his own unique, breakneck style of playing. He admitted that growing up, “I never really fit in with any local rock band at all because my style was something unheard of by the rock people.”

In 1971, he headed to Boston to attend Berklee College of Music. During his time in Boston, Return To Forever, the jazz fusion group led by legendary keyboardist Chick Corea, was looking for a new guitar player. After hearing a tape of Di Meola that one of his engineering friends passed on, Corea knew he found the next big thing.

At just 19 years old, Di Meola got the call from Corea to join the band. He was told to come down to New York City for two days of rehearsal before taking the stage at Carnegie Hall on July 3, 1974. Though excited, this show was trial by fire at the highest degree for Di Meola.

“It was an opportunity that was out of a dream,” he said. “I either had to grow or I was going to kind of fail in that situation, so I had to focus.”

The show was a success and Di Meola spent the next three years of his career with the quintet, including playing on the album “No Mystery,” which won a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Performance in 1975.

For Di Meola, being in a band with Corea was a rare opportunity to work with one of his musical heroes. During this time, Corea pushed him and the rest of the band to write their own compositions, something that Di Meola was initially reluctant to do but soon did under further encouragement from Di Meola.

After Corea broke up the lineup, Di Meola went solo and began recording his own albums. While working on his second album, 1977’s “Elegant Gypsy,” his record company suggested Di Meola work with Paco de Lucía, a Spanish flamenco guitar virtuoso to expand his name stateside.

Though de Lucía didn’t speak any English, the two hit it off using music as their uniting language, resulting in the song “Mediterranean Sundance,” one of Di Meaola’s most acclaimed works.

“We both had a very good sense of Latin rhythms, feeling the upbeat and knowing how to interplay,” he said. “And when the interplay between two players is on fire, it’s one of the greatest things you could do. It was one of those magic moments in the studio that totally worked.”

The album and aforementioned “Mediterranean Sundance” was a success, particularly in Europe. It was this success that led to British promoter Barrie Marshall approaching Di Meola and de Lucía about doing an acoustic trio tour with another jazz guitar legend, John McLaughlin.

The three hit the road in Fall 1980, starting in Scandinavia and working their way through Europe before heading across the Atlantic to the United States. He described the tour as “a healthy competition where we were really trying to impress one another and the audience got the benefit of seeing that,” with each guitarist pushing each other to further heights each night as crowds watched in awe.

“Each night was like gladiators going into the arena,” he said. “And we were really up there to impress one another. So when it was my turn to solo, I had to come up with some great stuff, especially if I’m following either one of them who may have done an unbelievable solo.”

The tour culminated in two shows at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco in December. Selections from the show on Friday, December 5, were released on the 1981 live album “Friday Night in San Francisco,” a critically acclaimed release that has sold over two million copies.

The show was the pinnacle of a two-month tour and countless hours of the trio “practicing like speed demons,” which was on full display in the stunning interplay and increasingly jaw-dropping solos performed that night.

Friday night’s show got all the love, but the show on Saturday, December 6, was equally as great as Friday night’s performance. Selections from the show were finally released in 2022 as “Saturday Night in San Francisco” after Di Meola found the box of tapes featuring recordings of the full tour.

“They were alternate pieces, they weren’t the same pieces as Friday night and the audience reaction was just magic,” he said. “Our technique levels were at the max, so I said ‘It would be terrible if this didn’t come out.’”

The success of “Friday Night in San Francisco” led Di Meola to primarily focus on acoustic-guitar driven performances, as well as him developing tinnitus in his ears.

But in 2024, he picked up his electric guitar again for “The Electric Years Tour,” which focused on his 1970s fusion work. He called doing this tour “a nostalgically satisfying thing to do” by playing the songs that put him on the jazz map.

Al Di Meola performs at The Suffolk on Thursday, June 26, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $35 to $85 at thesuffolk.org, with VIP packages available that include access to soundcheck, a meet-and-greet with Di Meola, signed memorabilia and priority seating. The Suffolk is at 118 East Main Street in Riverhead.