In one of his early stories, the great Argentine fabulist Jorge Luis Borges coined the phrase “algebra and fire” as a metaphor for the extremes of the mind: reason and passion, discipline and abandon. Nietzsche personified these polar principles as the gods Apollo and Dionysus; Freud wrote of the superego and the id. I propose another pair of names: Strunz and Farah.
Unlike the others, guitarists Jorge Strunz and Ardeshir Farah form not a dichotomy but a synthesis, embodying the twin tendencies, both individually and as a duo. Strunz and Farah’s playing is as fast and fiery as it gets — rarely has the cliché “fretboard pyrotechnics” been so appropriate — yet their sheer physical virtuosity always serves their exquisitely intelligent, mathematically precise melodic lines. World Beat? World Baroque is more like it, as the Latin rhythms and Middle Eastern flourishes — Strunz was born in Costa Rica, Farah in Iran — form the danceable background for intricately interwoven nylon-string riffs that are closer to Bach than to Jerry Garcia or Eddie Van Halen.
But perhaps not so far from these rock icons. “Both Ardeshir and I had been playing a lot of electric guitar in the late ’70s, and I wanted to get back to my roots, which were acoustic.” Strunz says. Farah happened to see Strunz perform with his Latin/rock band Caldera. When Caldera broke up, Strunz looked for another guitarist. A mutual friend arranged a meeting. “We saw that there was a chemistry there that quickly develped into a guitar duo thing,” Farah says.
“We both had the idea that acoustic guitar was going to be a more fruitful area of work for us,” Strunz says. “It seemed like there was an aesthetic purity to two chairs and two guitars, for starters. It was very attractive.”
Purity, yes, but not purism. Accompanied by an international band, Strunz and Farah braid threads of European guitar, percussive rhythms, and jazz improvisation into a strong, beautiful tapestry — “fusion” in the best sense of the word. Despite the disparate ingredients, the results are as pure as crystal and as bracing as a mountain stream.
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