Alex Masi is an Italian guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

ist.

He was born in Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

, and studied at the Conservatory of Music in Verona

Verona

Verona ; German Bern, Dietrichsbern or Welschbern) is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy, with approx. 265,000 inhabitants and one of the seven chef-lieus of the region. It is the second largest city municipality in the region and the third of North-Eastern Italy. The metropolitan area of Verona...

. He formed the heavy rock band Dark Lord in 1984 and recorded two EPs with them. In the early 1980s Masi moved briefly to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, where he played with several musicians.

With Dark Lord he toured as opening act for several major acts of the period until 1986, when he was invited by Metal Blade Records to move to Los Angeles and join the band Sound Barrier. He later founded a band of this own, called Masi. His first solo album was Attack of the Neon Shark, which received a Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Rock Album. The second solo album was called Vertical Invader, and featured only Masi along with drummer John Macaluso.

In 1998 Masi published the first album of a successful trilogy dedicated to three of the most famous classical musicians in history, entitled In the Name of Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

. This was followed by In the name of Mozart and In the Name of Beethoven. Around the same time he released his last Masi album, Eternal Struggle. In 2006 he published the solo album Late Nights at Desert Rimrock.

Discography

• Fire in the Rain (1987)
• Downtown Dreamer (1988)
• Attack of the Neon Shark (1989)
• Vertical Invader (1990)
• Tales from the North (1995)
• The Watcher (1997)
• In the Name of Bach (1999)
• Steel String Bach (2000)
• Eternal Struggle (2001)
• In the Name of Mozart (2004)
• Ritual Factory (2004, with MCM)
• In the Name of Beethoven (2005)
• Late Nights At Desert's Rimrock (2006)
• The Trio Of Stridence, Pastrami Standards (2006, with The Trio Of Stridence)
• MCM, 1900 Hard Times (2007, with MCM)
• Theory of Everything (2010)