2 Guitarists Seek Out the True-Blue Notes of Artistic Integrity and Audience Appeal

When Jorge Strunz first played with fellow guitarist Ardeshir Farah in the fall of 1979, the timing couldn’t have been more apropos.

Costa Rica-born Strunz, one of the founders of the Latin/jazz fusion band Caldera, was becoming frustrated with the mental, physical and financial demands of a large group and was looking for a less complicated means of expression.

“Caldera, despite four LPs for Capitol, had gotten to be a bit like a dinosaur, too heavy to move without corporate support, so I was thinking of going back to my own roots as an acoustic guitarist,” said Strunz, who lives in Woodland Hills with his wife, artist/writer Kathlyn Powell.

Farah, who, like Strunz, began to play guitar at age 12, proved to be the ideal foil in such a scheme.

“I was living in Santa Monica and Ardeshir came over,” Strunz recalled. “I was working on an old Hungarian Gypsy tune, something very fast called ‘Czardys,’ just to develop some technique, and asked him if he knew it. He said, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard it,’ and picked up a guitar and harmonized it right away. I said to myself, ‘Damn, here’s an interesting resource that just walked in the door, someone who can harmonize fast lines that quickly.’ ”

As it turned out, Farah--a native of Tehran who studied architecture at USC before deciding to become a professional musician--had long been a fan of Strunz’s distinctive instrumental prowess.

“I heard Caldera play at the Roxy in West Hollywood in October, 1976,” said Farah, 34. “The image just stayed in my mind because of the incredible musicianship of the group, especially Jorge on guitar. It was so incredible.”

Six months after that initial meeting, Strunz, 45, and Farah were working on their debut LP (“Mosaico” on Ganesh Records). Ten years, three LPs and many engagements later, the two have formed--with the addition of a bubbling, flavorful Latin rhythm section--one of the more melodically rich and technically dazzling instrumental combos in contemporary music. The group plays Thursday at LeCafe in Sherman Oaks and at Cafe Largo in Hollywood on Sept. 9.

Since the outset, the pair have drawn on such widely divergent sources as flamenco, jazz, Middle Eastern, Mezo-American, Latin, African and classical music in concocting their expressive approach. For quite a while, this diversity was a detriment.

“Industry people didn’t know what to call our music,” said Strunz, who contributes most of the pair’s compositions and does most of the talking in an interview. “They couldn’t sell us because we couldn’t be categorized. People told us we were too exotic. Now they call it ‘World Music’ or ‘World Beat.’ We sort of fit into that, though I simply see it as original guitar music.”

Though “Mosaico” was recorded in 1980, it wasn’t released until 1982, and then only in the Southland. Strunz and Farah’s next two LPs, “Frontera” and “Guitarras,” were recorded for Fantasy/Milestone, a branch of the Berkeley-based independent jazz conglomerate Fantasy/Galaxy. Those LPs, issued in 1984-85 and made possible through the late producer Dick Bock, were still basically guitar duo dates, with the inclusion of guest instrumentalists on some tracks.

“But as nice as it was, these records weren’t selling what we wanted,” Strunz said. “It wasn’t a career for us.

“So we decided that the only way to develop the kind of following we wanted was to put a heavy rhythmic base under the guitars and then improvise on top. Since doing that, public interest has been much higher. When we were playing as a duo, it was the same music, but much more reduced. Only the hard-core guitar freaks would come out and see us. Now, with the Latin rhythm section, people are turning out and dancing.”

Soon, the pair will be exposed to an even larger audience when their music is heard on the sound track of two Michael Mann television programs: “L.A. Takedown,” a two-hour police drama movie scheduled to air on NBC on Sunday, and the as-yet unscheduled NBC six-hour miniseries “Drug Wars: The Camarena Story.”

Through pop singer Jackson Browne and guitarist/violinist David Lindley, Strunz was introduced to Mann’s music supervisor, Debbie Gold. “She presented us to Michael, who asked our band to appear on ‘L.A. Takedown,’ and then contracted us to do sound-track music for the miniseries,” he said.

“Originally Michael wanted us, in collaboration with composer Charlie Calello,” whose credits include “Crime Story,” “to do a third of the music for ‘Drug Wars,’ ” Strunz said. “But he liked what we did so much, he gave us another third to do. So I’m composing for the two guitars and then Calello is using synthesizers for orchestral color. It’s a fast, multi-collaborative effort.”

The pair still play as a duo, or a trio, with guitarist Ciro Hurtado, a combination that they took to the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1986--”We played on the same bill as Simply Red and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, and I didn’t know if we’d fit but we got a tremendous response,” Strunz said--and the Havana International Guitar Festival in 1988.

“There we played a Friday night concert in their National Theatre and got a standing ovation at the end,” Strunz said. “The whole concert was filmed, and one of our friends there told us it was shown in its entirety on national TV. We may not be ready to move to Havana, but it’s a nice place to visit.”

The guitarists grew up in very different environments--Farah in Tehran as the son of an Iranian engineer, Strunz in Costa Rica, Canada and Spain as the son of a member of the U. S. Consular Corps. Still, they both heard flamenco at an early age--Strunz at home, Farah in cabarets with his family--and both players were strongly influenced by the Spanish Gypsy flamenco master Sabicas. Later, it was contemporary guitarist John McLaughlin and his group, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, that captured their fancy.

“I heard that band in London in 1973,” Farah said, “and I was blown away.”

“I heard snatches of him on ‘Bitches Brew,’ ” by Miles Davis, Strunz said, “and immediately honed in on him, like ‘What was that?’ He was definitely something different on guitar, both a lot of personality and a lot of technique.”

The pair also list the modern Spanish flamenco great Paco de Lucia, who has performed with McLaughlin and American guitarist Al DiMeola, as a primary source, and find themselves listening to a lot of World Beat music. But, ultimately, Strunz said, the two often simply influence each other. “We’ve established a whole language between the two of us, and we work it a lot,” he said. “It tends to influence you again.”

Now shopping for a record contract--their most recent release, “Misterio” is on the Santa Barbara-based audiophile label, Water Lily Acoustics--the guitarists are trying to walk that fine line between musical integrity and a larger audience.

“A lot of people that we really respect, McLaughlin and Paco among them, have told us that they really like our music,” Strunz said. “So if we can please them, then what’s left now is to please the rest of the people, the general public. That’s a great challenge.”