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Jazz guitarist Al DiMeola gives new meaning to the phrase world music by working with Ukrainian bandura player Roman Hrynkiv. Here DiMeola explores a special collection of instrumental seasonal works, underscoring them with layered percussion. A number of captivating originals and intricately arranged standards surface here, including "Carol of the Bells, "Ave Maria," and "The First Noel." DiMeola certainly titled the album right: these seasonal songs readily capture the penetrating chill and peacefulness of a star-laden winter sky. Recommended.

Martin Keller, Amazon.com

Al Di Meola has enjoyed an impressively long career as a recording artist. The guitar virtuoso was only 22 when he recorded his first album as a leader, Land of the Midnight Sun, back in 1976 (although he had joined Chick Corea's Return to Forever at 19), and a 56-year-old Di Meola was still going strong when 2011 arrived…

As filmed in November 2006, the music release Al Di Meola: Speak a Volcano - Return to Electric Guitar finds jazz-rock musician Di Meola onstage before a live audience in Leverkusen, Germany, in an electric guitar set accompanied by drummer Gumbi Ortiz. Here, Di Meola performs thirteen tracks including "Hypnose," "Red Moon" and "Azzura."

Latin music has been a strong influence on Al Di Meola since his early years, and in the '90s, he paid especially close attention to the music of Argentina. A welcome addition to his already impressive catalog, Di Meola Plays Piazzolla pays homage to the late Argentine tango master Astor Piazzolla (whose distinctive and very poetic brand of romanticism was considered quite daring and radical in Argentina). It would have been easy for an artist to allow his own personality to become obscured when saluting Piazzolla's legacy, but the charismatic Di Meola is too great an improviser to let that happen. Though his reverence for Piazzolla comes through loud and clear on these haunting classics, there's no mistaking the fact that this is very much an Al Di Meola project.