THE international guitar duo of Maurice Gordon and Samuele Vivian will perform at Redbones Blues Cafe tomorrow at 8:30 pm. It will be an up close and personal evening of world music, jazz and pop between the Caribbean and European guitarists.

Italian guitarist Samuele is in Jamaica for a short stint and has been invited by fellow guitarist Maurice Gordon to take part in a “not to be missed special guitar jam”. Samuele is currently filling in the lecturer’s post at the School of Music while Gordon is on a leave for a semester.

Samuele started playing at the age of 10 and after a couple of years of self-study, he started studying classical guitar at the conservatory A Pedrollo in Vicenza with Angelo Amato, a pupil of the legendary Segovia. During this period, he performed regularly with Latin-jazz, ethno and chamber music formations.

After graduation in 2004, he moved to Croatia, where he worked with well-known musicians in the pop and jazz scene, such as Nina Badric, Ivana Banfic, Ivana Kindl, and others. He also performed regularly at the famous lounge clubs The Garden, BP Club and Arsenal. In 2005 he started to study jazz, classic and pop guitar at University for Music and Dramatic Arts in Graz (Austria), getting the chance to learn from various masters including Dave Liebman, Billy Hart, John Abercrombie, and Tommy Emmanuel. He is also a private guitar teacher in diverse music high schools and participates in numerous recordings for Italian, Croatian and Austrian studios.

He has toured Central America, Spain, Croatia, Italy, Austria, and France. He produced his first album Mediterranea which features Alvis Reid from Jamaica on the bass and the Austrian drummer-percussionist Philipp Kopmajer. In 2009, Samuele started to do a Masters in Jazz Guitar and Pedagogy. Samuele performed with his jazz fusion trio IJA, which also featured Reid on bass and Jeremy Ashbourne on drums. Locally they performed at the 2010 Jamaica Jazz Festival, and at several prominent locations such as the Strawberry Hill Hotel, the Royal Plantation, the Mandeville Hotel and Christopher’s Jazz Lounge in Kingston. During a short trip to Cuba in February 2010 the trio had a special musical encounter with the world-famous musicians from Compay Segundo, popularly known as Buena Vista Social Club. Samuele will be in Jamaica until the beginning of June.

Guitarist and lecturer Maurice Gordon is a regular on the Jamaica jazz scene performing primarily in a jazz setting and with his current reggae, rock and pop group: Mojahrock. He loves playing in a “duet setting” and saw this as a wonderful opportunity to indulge in some serious “guitaring” with Vivian. Both Samuele and Gordon will have their solo cds on sale at the concert.

The “players of guitar” will perform primarily as a duo with a brief solo feature in each set. They will journey through various idioms including jazz, pop and world music featuring both popular standards and original compositions.