NEW CD BY ANDY SUMMERS

Andy Summers and Ben Verdery have collaborated on “First You Build A Cloud”. This is a 13-track CD album by Andy with a unique collaboration with the highly acclaimed classical guitarist Ben Verdery.
The tracklist is:
1. First You Build A Cloud
2. Skywalking Woman
3. Fez
4. Bring On The Night
5. World Piece
6. Love In The Time Of
7. Now I’m Free
8. Stone Town
9. Fingertips On Earth
10. The Girl From Reykjavik
11. Flow
12. Sarabande
13. Brotherhood Of The Grape – Bonus Track
Buy via US | GER | UK

[b]Summers on Making his New Solo Album, ‘First You Build A Cloud’ (source: Guitar Player)[/b]
?Classical guitarist Ben Verdery and I met when we both played the New York Guitar Festival in 2003,? explains Summers. ?Instantly recognizing that beyond our disparate guitar disciplines we were the same man, we decided to record together, and Ben visited me a few weeks later in California to sketch out ways we could bring the classical and electric guitar together. Ben had to leave to resume teaching at Yale?where he is the resident professor of classical guitar studies?and we decided to reconvene in a few weeks. The plan was suddenly energized when Yale commissioned contemporary composer Ingram Marshall to compose ?Dark Floresence??a concerto for electric and classical guitar that Ben and I ultimately debuted at Carnegie Hall in March 2005.
?To get the project moving, we decided that Ingram should watch Ben and I improvise together so he?d be conversant with the guitar sounds the two of us could produce. We tried a number of approaches. Ben played a detuned 12-string that he hammered with chopsticks, tried alternate tunings, and employed various virtuoso classical-guitar approaches that he bent out of shape in his own unique way. For my part, I found that using a Steve Klein guitar with the Steinberger TransTrem tremolo system, and playing through an infinite reverb setting on a Lexicon PCM 70 coupled with an octave divider gave me a voice that sang high and clear over the range of Ben?s nylon-string guitar. It was an exciting two days, as we improvised together and found an area to play in without any formal decision. Ben would start something off, and I would improvise and/or compose against it. This approach was so successful that Ben suggested we go at our album in the same spirit as the Ingram Marshall sessions, instead of the usual route of working out duet compositions. As a result, First You Build A Cloud is, for the most part, pure first-take improvisations. Later, we added a piece of mine entitled ?Now I?m Free? from my Earth and Sky album, but, this time, with me on dobro and Ben on acoustic.
?The thing that thrills me about Cloud is that we pulled off a recording that?at least to my ears?is pretty unique. There is no way we could have formally composed something like this, and this is where its energy comes from?well, that and a couple of very nice bottles of Rioja!?

Here follows a very recent interview with Andy Summers by Guitar Player.