AL DI MEOLA & LEONID AGUTIN: COSMOPOLITAN LIVE

I really have no passion to review this dvd, but since I saw the trouble of borrowing it and adding it to Al Di Meola's discography, I'll finish the process. So, the American jazz /fusion /world music guitarist Al Di Meola is among those musicians I appreciate (without being a fan or true connoisseur, though). I didn't know in advance who is Leonid Agutin: he's a singer from Moscow, one of the biggest rock stars from Russia. I have nothing against his singing, his warm and slightly raspy voice is fairly good.

Their collaborative album Cosmopolitan Life (2005) undoubtedly was well noticed in certain music circles and must have increased international recognition of both artists, or at least that seems to have been the goal. Had I read the album's sole two-star review here, I probably wouldn't have bothered. The music is strongly Latin flavoured pop sung in English. I'm completely out of my homefield, but if I refer to artists such as Ricky Martin and Juanes, you may get some idea. Sure, especially Di Meola's guitar playing is fine, but the overall production is too big and calculated. The musical spirit of the songs is either very outgoing and danceable or more romantic and ballad oriented with a laid back summer holiday mood.

But the dvd itself feels like an extended promotional stuff. By the way it was not until I actually viewed the disc that I could get the contents correctly here. Very messy and misleading it was at first, relying on what's printed. The main dish is the concert at Montreux Jazz Festival, featuring six songs starring Leonid Agutin and three instrumentals highlighting Al Di Meola's talent.

The Montreux section is sandwiched between a lengthy documentary of this international collaboration -- lots of clips from various concerts across the world, bits of interviews, also some clips from music videos -- and the "Xtras" section featuring three music videos and three TV clips. The whole feels, as I said, terribly emphasized on the advertisement-like promo stuff, and very repetitive especially for the reappearance of the title track. The video of 'Cosmopolitan Life' is almost tasteless with the cliched party-party dancing girls wearing less and less. The documentary has no subtitles which is another minus. The target audience is definitely elsewhere than within listeners of prog and fusion. I would't recommend this dvd even to fans of Al Di Meola as a fusion artist. Listeners of commercially oriented Latin rock/pop might enjoy the music.