Matteo Mancuso (born 22 November 1996) is an Italian jazz and rock guitarist and composer from

Palermo, Sicily Palermo ( , ; scn, Palermu , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan province. The city is noted for its hi ...

. Mancuso is known for adapting a quasi-flamenco right-hand technique to the electric guitar and improvised solos without the use of a pick.

Steve Vai Steven Siro Vai (; born June 6, 1960) is an American guitarist, composer, songwriter, and producer. A three-time Grammy Award winner and fifteen-time nominee, Vai started his music career in 1978 at the age of eighteen as a transcriptionist f ...

, Al Di Meola,

Joe Bonamassa Joseph Leonard Bonamassa ( ; born May 8, 1977) is an American blues rock guitarist, singer and songwriter. He started his career at age twelve, when he opened for B.B. King. Since 2000, Bonamassa has released fifteen solo albums through his ind ...

and others have publicly praised him, with Vai calling him "the future" of electric guitar. In 2023 he released his first studio album, ''The Journey.''

Education

Mancuso was born in 1996 in Palermo. He started playing the guitar at the age of 10 with his father Vincenzo, an experienced professional guitarist and music producer who performed with many well-known Italian artists. Mancuso began performing live on stage at the age of 11. In 2017, following his performance at the

Umbria Jazz Festival The Umbria Jazz Festival is one of the most important jazz festivals in the world and has been held annually since 1973, usually in July, in Perugia, and surrounding cities of the region of Umbria Italy. Furthermore, the Umbria Jazz Winter Festi ...

, he was awarded a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston. After obtaining a diploma from the music high school, where he studied classical guitar and transverse flute, in June 2022 he graduated with honours in jazz guitar from the Palermo Conservatory of Music.

Career

In 2009, at the age of 12, Mancuso performed at the Castelbuono Jazz Festival in Sicily and in 2017 at the Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia. Mancuso performed at the

NAMM Show The NAMM Show is an annual event in the United States that is organized by the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), who describe it as "the industry’s largest stage, uniting the global music, sound and entertainment technology commun ...

in Anaheim, California in 2019 and 2024. In 2019 he participated in the Asia International Guitar Festival in Bangkok, the Hard Rock Guitar Battle in Pattaya and the NAMM Musikmesse Russia, and held a series of guitar clinics in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Perm. In 2022, he was invited by Al Di Meola in the thirty-first edition of Eddie Lang Jazz Festival, to duet with him on stage. He was also chosen by Italian progressive rock band PFM to perform live in Lugano

Estival Jazz Estival Jazz (also ''Lugano Estival Jazz'') is an annual music festival that takes place at the beginning of summer in the Swiss city of Lugano in the canton of Ticino. It is an open-air and free of charge festival. The event, which is spread over ...

, replacing their guitarist, who was busy on that day. PFM then released a 16-track double album called ''The Event – Live in Lugano'', which is the first live record to feature Matteo Mancuso on guitar. In 2024 Mancuso was a featured artist at

's "Vai Academy 7.0" guitar camp in Orlando, Florida. He conducted clinics, performed in concert and jammed with Steve Vai and his band, joined by keyboardist

Jordan Rudess Jordan Rudess (born Jordan Charles Rudes; November 4, 1956) is an American musician, software developer and composer best known as a member of the progressive metal band Dream Theater and the progressive metal supergroup Liquid Tension Experi ...

SNIPS

In 2017, Mancuso founded a trio called “SNIPS”, which includes Salvatore Lima, on drums and Riccardo Oliva on bass. SNIPS is a jazz fusion band and their music is based on rearrangements of popular fusion standards and original compositions. Their version of the The Chicken hit 2.2 million views on YouTube. In the following year the trio has played at the Musika-Expo in Rome and at Musikmesse in Frankfurt.

Matteo Mancuso Trio

The trio was formed in 2020 with Stefano India on Bass and Giuseppe Bruno on Drums. When Mancuso uploaded their performance of 'Havona' by Jaco Pastorius to YouTube, the trio received recognition for their "killer lineup" In 2022, Matteo Mancuso Trio performed at the Bremen International Festival; the

Auditorium Parco della Musica An auditorium is a room built to enable an audience to hear and watch performances. For movie theatres, the number of auditoria (or auditoriums) is expressed as the number of screens. Auditoria can be found in entertainment venues, communit ...

in Rome; Uppsala Jazz Festival in Sweden; Spoleto Jazz Festival, in Italy.

North America 2024

Matteo toured from January 25 - February 4 in the following US cities: Agoura Hills (Los Angeles), San Pedro, Bakersfield, Orangevale (Sacramento) and Chicago.

Style

Mancuso switches to using a rest stroke with his index finger and middle finger to pick the strings like a classical guitar player, a finger-style right hand technique reminiscent of flamenco. He is considered a very talented guitarist and has been described as a virtuoso of the instrument by renowned guitarists such as Al Di Meola,

Tosin Abasi Oluwatosin Ayoyinka Olumide Abasi (born January 7, 1983), is an American musician, best known as the founder and lead guitarist of the instrumental progressive metal band Animals as Leaders. He has recorded and released five albums with Anim ...

and

Trevor Rabin Trevor Charles Rabin (; born ) is a South African rock musician and composer. Born into a musical family and raised in Johannesburg, Rabin took up the piano and guitar at an early age and became a session musician, playing and producing with a va ...

Discography

The first albums he is credited with, were published in 2023. Studio
The Journey
(2023) Live
THE EVENT - Live In Lugano
Estival Jazz, with PFM (2022)

References

External links

Matteo Mancuso Official WebsiteMatteo Mancuso in 2014 developing his fingerstyle techniqueMatteo Mancuso in 2018 developing his fingerstyle techniqueMatteo Mancuso 2022 playing live for pfm, in the record called: "THE EVENT – Live in Lugano”Matteo Mancuso
o
Discogs
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mancuso, Matteo 1996 births Living people Italian guitarists Italian male guitarists Progressive rock guitarists 21st-century guitarists Italian jazz guitarists Italian rock guitarists Country guitarists Musicians from Palermo Palermo Conservatory alumni Jazz-blues guitarists 21st-century Italian male musicians Jazz fusion guitarists