MODENA, PIAZZA ROMA
Wednesday, July 21

In February 1952, an eleven-year-old played the first movement of Mozart’s Coronation Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Eleven years later, Miles Davis brought Herbie Hancock into his quintet, where alongside Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams he helped shape modern jazz. Under his own name, he recorded classics such as Watermelon Man and Maiden Voyage for Blue Note. In 1973, Head Hunters fused jazz with funk and sold more than a million copies; in 1983, Rockit carried hip-hop and electronics into the pop charts. His score for ’Round Midnight won an Oscar, and he has won 14 Grammys, including Album of the Year in 2008 for River: The Joni Letters. Hancock is a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and chairman of the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz. 

As a teenager in New Jersey, Al Di Meola rode the bus to Greenwich Village night after night to hear Larry Coryell, the guitarist he would later call “the Godfather of Fusion”. In 1974, aged nineteen, he was recruited by Chick Corea for the fusion supergroup Return to Forever, recording three landmark albums including the Grammy-winning No Mystery. His solo debut Land of the Midnight Sun (1976) and Elegant Gypsy made him one of the defining guitarists of his generation, and Friday Night in San Francisco, recorded in 1980 with John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucía, sold more than four million copies. A pioneer in blending jazz with world music, he has explored flamenco, tango, Brazilian and Middle Eastern sounds with his World Sinfonia and recorded with artists ranging from Luciano Pavarotti and Pino Daniele to Paul Simon and Herbie Hancock. Over more than 30 albums as a leader he has won twelve Guitar Player readers’ poll awards and the Montreal Jazz Festival’s Miles Davis Award.