Guitar Trio

Super Guitar Trio: Larry Coryell, Al Di Meola, Biréli Lagrène
Live at Montreuz 1989
Eagle Eye Media

Larry Coryell has always had a certain kinship for his fellow guitar players. He has often teamed up with his colleagues to form all-star ensembles, and has written an instructional column for Guitar Player magazine since 1976, happily passing along his experience to others. It is not surprising to see him anchoring one such all-star trio for an acoustic set documented as Live at Montreux 1989.

Joining Coryell at Montreux were Al Di Meola, best known for his work with Chick Corea as part of Return to Forever and Biréli Lagrène, who was just then emerging as the next great guitarist in the gypsy jazz tradition. According to Di Meola the performance marked the finale of their five week tour, and the three had reached an impressive level of sympathetic compatibility.

The trio’s set was well served by their choice of material, with many Latin or gypsy influenced compositions that gave them an opportunity to display their dexterity. Coryell’s “PSP No. II” starts in a contemplative mood, but quickly morphs through several changes of mood and phase, giving all three ample opportunities to demonstrate their prowess. The camera work is impressive throughout the concert, capturing many close-ups of the trio’s fleet fingers.

Latin flavor is imported from Argentina, Brazil, and Spain, with the former represented by Astor Piazolla’s “Tango Suite (For Two Guitars),” as a feature for Coryell and Di Meola. Both clearly have a strong feeling for the piece. Piazolla’s music had long had great importance to Di Meola, and Coryell, who had begun interpreting composers like Ravel and Rimsky-Korsikoff in the 1980’s, also shows a strong affinity for the composition.

From Brazil, Laurindo Almeida’s “Braziliance” is another showcase for the full trio. Almeida’s lovely melody gets a respectful treatment in perhaps the briefest performance of the set. Two Chick Corea-penned Return to Forever tunes close the DVD: an up-tempo “No Mystery” and the appropriately Spanish tinged “Spain,” their designated encore piece.

For many, Lagrène was and may still be the surprise of the set. Although Coryell has his moments on “Musette De Paris Avec La Rue Dupierre No. 5,” it is really Lagrène feature spot, with the senior member of the trio sensitively supporting him. “Musette” and his solo performance following on “Waltz” are pretty impressive, showing how much Lagrène had absorbed and processed of the tradition at a relatively early point in his career.

Some purists might be skeptical of Coryell and Di Meola given their fusion pedigrees, but there is no denying the acoustic facility captured on film by all three trio members that night in 1989. One supposes if the concert had been performed in the 90’s instead of the late 80’s all three would be dressed in black, instead of white. That is about the only sense of it being dated, as the music certainly holds up well (particularly the compositions of Piazolla and Lagrène).

Improvising

Improvising: My Life in Music
By Larry Coryell
Backbeat Books
0-87930-826-5

As one of the pioneers of jazz-rock fusion, Larry Coryell’s star was rising in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s at a time when jazz overall was trending down commercially. Despite the ups and downs to be expected in a long musical career, Coryell recounts a generally charmed, if chaotic life in his new memoir Improvising.

When discussing his success, Coryell gives credit early and often to his step-father Gene for encouraging his speculative career choice. The guitarist writes:

“I must have had a deep universal connection with Gene Coryell because, unlike most parents who want their kid to have some stable gig to “fall back” on, he simply encouraged the hell out of me to excel at what I loved—music.” (p. 6)

The 1960’s and 1970’s took a toll on Coryell, particularly the drug addiction he would eventually kick in the 1980’s. Coryell, while readily acknowledging his mistakes, is reluctant to dwell on the more lurid details. Along the way, he saw the violent turmoil of the early 1970’s first hand, in one instance having a gig in Boulder broken up because of a bomb scare. Coryell also recalls witnessing the time honored French tradition of rioting and burning cars in Toulouse:

“What did happen was an agitated group of students decided that ‘all music should be free’—that is, they didn’t want to pay—so they rioted outside the theater where we were performing, throwing rocks against the second-floor dressing room windows. They turned over some cars and set fire to trash cans.” (p. 92)

It seems clear that Coryell has the same passion for teaching he has for playing, as he frequently inserts instructional asides into his narrative. In an appendix, several of his Guitar Player columns are reprinted, and a CD of guitar lessons is also included.

Throughout Improvising, Coryell tries to minimize dramatic situations and resists the urge to criticize former associates. He goes out of his way to express his respect for guitar colleagues like the great Barney Kessel and the under-appreciated Hungarian defector Gabor Szabo. Written in an easy-going, conversational style, Improvising is a pleasant read that will be particularly rewarding and informative for students of the guitar.