Saturday Night in San Francisco

This welcome supplement to the iconic 1981 album <i>Friday Night in San Francisco</i> finds guitar giants Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucía in extraordinary form not only as an acoustic trio, but also as unaccompanied soloists. McLaughlin ventures a remarkably free-form rendition of “One Word”, from the 1973 Mahavishnu Orchestra classic <i>Birds of Fire</i>—a fitting complement to the show-stopping trio reinvention of “Meeting of the Spirits” from <i>The Inner Mounting Flame</i>. Di Meola, who curated and produced the release, follows the trio’s rendition of his “Splendido Sundance” with the stunningly virtuosic “Trilogy Suite”, while de Lucía offers not one but two jaw-dropping showcases (“Monasterio de Sal”, “Soniquete”), plus a trio arrangement of his “El Pañuelo”. There is something marvelously counterintuitive about fusion guitar heroes unplugging and getting an even wilder crowd response. Such were the times. Above all, it’s the players’ distinct aesthetic approaches and tonal personalities that make the music so compelling. With Di Meola on steel-string, McLaughlin on nylon-string with a pick and de Lucía playing finger-style in the high flamenco tradition, the trio created a blend like nothing else.