My Music Pictures:
About Me:
Born in Rome, Italy in 1972, into a family comprising two former professional guitarists (his father led a beat band in the '60s while his uncle Marco Comandè has been a prized "modern classical" guitarist of international fame), Diego Magnani was trained in his youth as a classical pianist, learning how to read and write music as well.
Although his longtime love for the music made by the Beatles (and especially by Paul McCartney) led him to quit the classical training in order to play Beatle music on piano. His admiration for McCartney's playing then was instrumental in making him decide to learn to play guitar as a transition towards bass guitar, which he chose as his main musical instrument.
A multi-instrumentist by nature, DM spent the high school years experiencing the thrill of performing live with a band in front of an unknown audience, first as a singer/guitarist, then as a drummer (!) and finally as a bass guitarist and singer.
His first serious live experiences made him get to know the Roman underground rock scene, of which he was to become part for no less than 2 decades. He made his semi-professional debut as a musician in the progressive rock bands Lamia (a Marillion tribute band) and Gargantua (a band performing some Yes and Jethro Tull covers, alongside original material). During this period he also had the chance to work as a studio arranger and as a session/live musician.
In early 1993 DM joined BlackNight, a hard rock band whose activity lasted a decade during which it went from being a hard rock cover band to writing and recording original material, then to being Rome's official Deep Purple tribute band to writing and recording stuff in a completely different mood, switching from hard rock to a more modern adult rock.
The season 1993-1994 saw the band perform in the main venues of Rome and its surroundings where it started to gather a huge local following (and even a fan club!), while in 1994 BlackNight made their television debut as guests of the TV program Roxy Bar, where they held a blazing live performance.
In 1995 the band became the core of a project which led to forming a kind of "theatre company" around itself. The 5 musicians gathered around themselves no less than 15 singers, chosen among the most important of the Roman pop/rock/avantgarde music scene, and went on to set up a completely new "live concert version" of the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, shortly after followed by their renditions of Tommy and Hair.
The BlackNight Company performed the 3 rock operas throughout Italy's main theatres and arenas while in early 1999 Jesus Christ Superstar's very debut show became a CD, distributed by the magazine Avvenimenti. After the huge success of the JCS CD (20,000 copies sold in the first 2 weeks) later that year the same mag issued a second CD, based on two BlackNight Company's performances of Hair.
During the 1993-2002 period BlackNight survived many lineup changes which contributed to a shift in the musical style, as shown by their 1996 and 1999 unreleased CDs, finally leading to a transition into the new band r-esistenza, which soon began working on new material after dropping all BlackNight Company's activity.
Aside playing with BlackNight, DM has always found time to dedicate himself to other styles of music. In 1994-1995 he founded Il Re Nudo, a cover band whose repertoire was made of material by Italian progressive rock bands from the '70s.
Willing to get back to performing in small clubs and in exploring more modern sounds, in 1996 DM formed the cover band Santi Numi, whose tracklist consisted in songs by the main artists of the 1990s as well as some "fun" numbers. While being a successful "fun" band, DM left the band the following year due to the increasing work with BlackNight and BlackNight Company.
DM has also been one of the "house bass guitarists" of the jam session nights held at Radio Londra Caffé during seasons 1997-1999.
In 2002 DM began to suffer from right arm tendonitis, a severe pathology which forced him to quit all musical activity that very year, leaving BlackNight/r-esistenza for good. Soon after the band changed its lineup and name to become the u-rock project.
DM's last works as a musician were as part of the backing band of the international artists Kelly Joyce and Paulina Rubio on the occasion of a few important television shows (Girofestival and Festivalbar) broadcasted by the main Italian TV networks, RAI/RAI International and Mediaset.
After a couple of years DM made his musical comeback in late 2003, forming the Beatles cover band The Beagles, which he quit in mid 2004, after an exhausting season during which the band performed even a couple of gigs a week.
In late 2007 he became involved in a Yes tribute band project, meanwhile rejoining again his former BlackNight Company bandmates for a new rendition of their Jesus Christ Superstar version, performed live at Alpheus, Rome in late November 2008.
During the years of his musical activity DM had the chance to play and work with some very skilled musicians and producers (some of which were already or were to become very famous), among which the following have to be mentioned: Paulina Rubio, Kelly Joyce, Cristiano Micalizzi, Nicola Di Staso, Roberto Mezzetti, Federico Troiani, Crystal White, Andrea Ruta, Raffaella Misiti, Anna Maria Angelucci, Riccardo Macrì, Desiree Mohammad, Fabio Palmieri, Pierfrancesco Drago and Giorgio Clementelli (of Revelation), Enzo Vita (of Il Rovescio della Medaglia), Umberto Sulpasso jr and Christian Murasecchi (of u-rock), Luca Brunori and Fabrizio Verzaschi (of F.Lu.F), Franco Di Stefano, Mike Liddell-Hurley, Luigi Lusi and Giacomo Vitullo (of Innuendo), Marco Troiano, Mario Di Staso, Shawn Logan, Dougie Meakin and Dave Summer (of Superobots and West Coast Lizzy), Luca Velletri, Alex Brunori, Beppe De Francia, Andy Bartolucci, Vincenzo Lombardozzi and Carlo Ventura (of Cialtroni Animati), Claudio Compagno, Eleonora Bruni, Marco Libanori (of Taxi109), Luca Bernardini, "Hagi" Anadi Mishra, Stefano Vicarelli (of fonderia), Peter Robertson and Fausto Cecconi, to name but a few.
Diego Magnani has been regarded by many as one of the most creative and reliable bass players of the Roman rock scene.
