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Under A Mediterranean Sky: Journeys Of Inspiration - Part One
January 2021

This is the first of three blogs, following my travels through all regions that inspired the music for my new album.

The first track, Mdina, was linked to Malta. Located within the central part of the Mediterranean, this island is a melting pot of many cultures throughout history... Its capital Valletta has withstood and fallen to repeated invasions. Mdina, preserved as a historic city with its massive fortresses and yellow ochre stone buildings where the walls of time are thin, pulls you back through centuries. Maltese Promoter and pal Nigel Camilleri told Jo and me about its turbulent past. So many battles, with successive controlling forces, including Romans, Arabs, Knights of St John and many more. Yet, you also feel the beauty and romance of the place as you walk through the picturesque narrow streets. Here, I felt moved to write music encompassing all those extremes of existence... an epic film for the ear within a track.

A spectacular trip with Hungarian band Djabe that I play with around once a year brought Adriatic Blue into being. On the edge of dramatic verdant green mountains, the rugged Croatian coastline plunges into the Adriatic Sea. It has an extraordinary depth of blue, interspersed by beautiful archipelagos of tree covered islands, shimmering within the blue like emerald jewels. The sense of peace and wonder brought on the sound of the most delicate, gentle music, as we slowly wove our way down to the palm-lined port of the atmospheric red-roofed historic city, Dubrovnik, where we were due to play.

Sirocco was inspired by the Sahara and Arabian deserts, which together form the most magical expanse imaginable. Three visits Jo and I made lie behind this track. The first was to Morocco. Staying in Marrakesh was exotic, with all the spices, smells, lamps, snakes appearing from baskets, getting lost in the narrow labyrinth of the souk, and wandering by ornate mosques and mausoleums. We then took a trip across the Atlas Mountains, descending on the far side past Biblical mud brick settlements to the Sahara Desert, stretching out ahead of us into a far distant haze...

We experienced even more of the desert on our Jordan trip, from a journey through rocky outcrops to a Crusader castle, followed by the extraordinary ancient city of Petra and on to a totally remote part of the Arabian desert. Surrounded only by rocks and sand, miles away from even the nearest road, we travelled with Bedouins and slept in a tent under the stars...

The third country of Sirocco inspiration was Egypt. Having visited the iconic pyramids of Giza, where you see the desert stretching out into the Saharan hinterland, we journeyed for hundreds of miles down through the barren landscape to Aswan in the south. Nearby, on our way to the site of Abu Simbel, we stopped to look at a mirage. They really do exist! From here, via a boat trip up the Nile, we saw many extraordinary archaeological sites in the most breathtaking landscape. A high point was the fulfilment of a dream to visit the Valley of the Kings, which I'd already named a track after years ago.

Sirocco encompasses all those desert experiences, which invoke a sense of the exotic and the romance of a great wilderness.

I'll get into my experiences behind the next four tracks in the second blog...