Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, Paco De Lucía – Saturday Night In San Francisco (IMPEX)

180-gram vinyl

The long-awaited follow-up to Friday Night In San Francisco!

From original 16-track analog live session tapes by Al Di Meola, Katsuhiko Naito and Roy Hendrickson!

Mastered from analog tapes by Bernie Grundman

Pressed at RTI

Working with hours of original 16-track live session tapes, Al Di Meola and his team have brilliantly curated this musical tour-de-force, bringing to life for the first time on LP, SACD-Hybrid and CD the explosively virtuosic final performance of Di Meola, John McLaughlin, and Paco De Lucia at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco, December 6, 1980.

In the exclusive essay by music historian Charles L. Granata, Di Meola says of that final night: "It's exciting because the audience was right there with us, savoring every single note of music. And, we were ripping. It was crazy good!"

Impex worked carefully with Di Meola, mixing engineer Roy Hendrickson (SPIN Studio), and mastering engineer Bernie Grundman to recreate the magic of Friday Night In San Francisco so these never-before-released solos and trios burst out of your system with striking clarity, dynamics and technical brilliance. "Crazy good," indeed.

"Our newly-announced release of Saturday Night in San Francisco is the culmination of over two years of combined efforts between us (artist/label manager/fearless leader Abey Fonn, designer Robert Sliger, and quality control guru Bob Donnelly) and: guitarists Al Di Meola and John McLaughlin (plus the estate of Paco De Lucia); Ulrike Schwarz of Anderson Audio; audio engineers Katsu Naito, Roy Hendrickson and original recording engineer Tim Pinch; writer Charles L. Granata; and Sony Music Entertainment.

"There were many detours, compromises, and unexpected gains, all of which made our sequel to the classic Friday Night in San Francisco better in every way. As we move into production of the HQ-180 LPs, SACD-Hybrid, and compact discs we once again shout out the highly collaborative and successful partnerships we have with Stoughton Printing (jackets, booklets, and tray cards) G&M Printing (screen-printed LP labels), Record Technology (HQ-180 vinyl) and Sonopress Germany (SACD and CD discs). The success of every Impex release — and especially the enormous undertaking that is Saturday Night in San Francisco —hangs solidly on this astonishing cross-company partnership, made even more miraculous by the delays and shortages caused by the pandemic. We never work in a vacuum and the work we share makes us all better for it." — Impex Records