Santana and McLaughlin: Invitation to Illumination Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Santana and McLaughlin: Invitation to Illumination Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 19, 2013

Rolling Stone is attempting to weather some considerable controversy right now based on its recent questionable choice of a certain “cover model”, but two totally different reasons to disparage the magazine go back years. How in heaven’s name could the magazine’s vaunted list of The Greatest Guitarists of All Time have placed Carlos Santana at only twentieth and, even more incredibly for those who value actual technique and musical knowledge, the astonishing John McLaughlin at the insanely low rank of fortieth? Both of these guitarists are rightfully lauded and now firmly ensconced in legendary status, and if Santana never approached McLaughlin’s quicksilver mastery or quite attempted his intercultural fusion and polyrhythmic eccentricities, he made up for it with sheer passion and a propulsive accessibility that made him, at one point anyway, the biggest rock guitarist in the post-Hendrix landscape. While younger fans may only associate Santana with his massive hit "Twenty", featured on his Supernatural album, older aficionados will remember a time when Santana was actually known as Devadip Carlos Santana, after having become an acolyte of McLaughlin's guru Sri Chinmoy, who had of course christened John as Mahavishnu. During this spiritually questing era, the two megastars collaborated on Love, Devotion, Surrender, which some wags at the time suggested might wanted to reverse the order of the last two elements to provide an acronym of what some suspected both artists might be ingesting to come up with such otherworldly music.

I grew up in Salt Lake City, a place I’m sure many consider a cultural backwater, but as a budding musician, I started gigging as a teenager in the rather large shadows of three guys who were several years older than I was but who had set the bar rather impossibly high for other Utah jazz guys coming up through the ranks. The Fowler Brothers, whose father was the head of the University of Utah’s Music Department, had already left for greener pastures in Los Angeles and had started playing with Frank Zappa, while a keyboardist named Stu Goldberg had become something of a legend around Salt Lake and would soon become one of John McLaughlin’s sidemen in one of the many groups that he fronted through the years. (I still remember attending a party as a high schooler where Stu showed up. He attempted to make polite conversation with me, even telling me about a jam session that was going to be held that weekend, but I was too cowed to say much of anything in response.) And so my interest in McLaughlin’s music has had a tangentially personal edge to it, and it has in fact surprised me quite a bit when I’ve talked to young guitarists about this master, and they many times have absolutely no idea who he is.

Though McLaughlin sold a lot of records with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, his overweening intellectualism and genre bashing efforts made him somewhat more of a niche artist than Santana, a straight ahead rock guy (albeit with that fantastic Latin percussion section) who was more readily accessible and therefore perhaps a more instantly identifiable “rock god”. That these two very different artists should have teamed up at all is rather remarkable to begin with, but the fact that they have created such memorable music both in prior albums and this 2011 Montreux Festival performance is truly astonishing. What’s most interesting for those who have followed both of these incredible players’ careers is how interchangeable they often seem to be here. McLaughlin, ever the precise, intricate player, just lets loose with some fuzz-worthy attacks here, while Santana, a blistering soloist if ever there were one, can be incredibly restrained and refined. This symbiosis creates at least one or two kind of funny moments where it’s obvious the cameraman isn’t quite sure who’s soloing, and quickly pans to find the correct player.

There’s nothing quite as complex as some of the Mahavishnu or even Shakti material on tap here, but there is still a multicultural feel to a lot of what’s offered here. An incredible band (featuring dual drumming by Cindy Blackman Santana and Dennis Chambers) moves through a rather incredible variety of tunes, including standouts by Pharoah Sanders, Led Zeppelin (yep—“Stairway to Heaven”!), Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane, among several others. The emphasis here is on fairly hard rocking tunes, with a really strong emphasis on a massed low end, but some may feel the highlight of the show is when John and Carlos simply pull up a couple of stools and sit downstage engaging in some gentle duets on such classics as “Naima”. Love, devotion, surrender indeed.

The set list includes:

• 01. Echoes of Angels/Introductions
• 02. The Life Divine
• 03. Medley: Peace on Earth/A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall/Stairway to Heaven/Our Prayer/SOCC
• 04. Right Off
• 05. Vuelta Abajo
• 06. Vashkar
• 07. The Creator Has a Master Plan
• 08. Naima
• 09. Lotus Land Op. 47, No. 1
• 10. Downstairs
• 11. Venus/Upper Egypt
• 12. Let Us Go Into the House of the Lord
• 13. Black Satin
• 14. Cindy Blackman Santana Drum Solo
• 15. A Love Supreme
• 16. Shake It Up and Go

Santana and McLaughlin: Invitation to Illumination Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Santana & McLaughlin Live at Montreux 2011: Invitation to Illumination is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eagle Vision, an imprint of Eagle Rock Entertainment, with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. Unfortunately a lot of this concert is bathed in the ever popular blue color, which creates the almost expected issues of occasional posterizing and banding, especially when the cameras are facing any of the lights. The blue lighting also tends to suck some of the fine detail out of the imagery. Some other sequences are cast in a red shade, and much the same anomalies crop up. Other than these transitory issues, the bulk of this concert looks great, with nicely precise images and very little in the way of combing artifacts from the interlaced presentation. Fine detail is extremely good in the close-ups and well above average in midrange shots. The presentation here has some occasional issues with shadow detail, especially in some of the stage lighting scenarios described above.

Santana and McLaughlin: Invitation to Illumination Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Santana & McLaughlin Live at Montreux 2011: Invitation to Illumination features both a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround mix as well as an LPCM 2.0 stereo fold down. Both of these tracks are astoundingly vivid, with really crystalline clarity that delivers the amazing tonal variety of both lead guitarists extremely well. Occasional vocals are a bit soft at times, and in fact the entire mix is occasionally overpowered simply by dint of the fact that there are two extremely aggressive drummers playing at the same time. That same emphasis on the low end will no doubt excite those who want their beats delivered loudly and strongly. The LPCM 2.0 mix was a bit too crowded sounding for my personal tastes, especially in the midrange and lower range. The 5.1 mix allows a bit more breathing room, which gives a better reproduction of this high energy assault.

Santana and McLaughlin: Invitation to Illumination Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are offered on this Blu-ray disc.

Santana and McLaughlin: Invitation to Illumination Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Santana & McLaughlin Live at Montreux 2011: Invitation to Illumination finds both of these masters in incredibly fine form, but even more surprisingly, often in each other's form. They trade licks and solos with ease, and the backup band propels them through some amazingly diverse material. The personal highlight for me was the "kinder, gentler" set of duets that the two perform downstage, but there is plenty of hard rocking material here that should satisfy those who want things more pedal to the metal. This Blu-ray has some typical issues of live concert fare video given some poor stage lighting choices (which probably look great live, but fail to translate to video very well), but the audio is outstanding, though heavily weighted toward the low end. Highly recommended.