'Imaginative guitarist seeks band.' This advertisement ensured that Steve Hackett joined the rock group
Genesis in 1970. Partly thanks to him the British group got the label prog. After leaving Genesis in 1977, Hackett threw himself into a solo career in which he could do things his own way. On his latest work, Under a Mediterranean Sky, we hear him as a not undeserving classical guitarist. The
… compositions are dedicated to the different regions of the Mediterranean. Musically, one can clearly hear influences of composers from the Spanish Romantic period, such as Isaac Albéniz and Francisco Tárrega. But in the orchestral arrangements and the almost poppy song Joie de Vivre, we can clearly hear that this album comes from the brain of a prog musician. Although some passages come dangerously close to Mediterranean music clichés, we can conclude that his imagination does not yet leave the young seventy-year-old in the lurch. (JV)more
