Giuliano Modarelli is a guitarist, composer and producer born in Milan in 1977 and based in London. He trained as a jazz musician, then spent two decades building a body of work where jazz meets Hindustani classical music, Afghan and Mediterranean folk song, dub and electronics. He co-founded the London band Kefaya with the keyboardist Al MacSween, and he is a recurring guitarist on the records of the drummer and bandleader Sarathy Korwar.

He began on classical guitar and moved to England in 2000 to study jazz at Leeds College of Music, graduating with a Bachelor's degree in jazz in 2003. He then worked full time as a musician, playing with the bands Sawa Teen (whose self-titled record appeared in 2004), Raga Nova and Nshwa, at festivals including Bestival and the Moor Music Festival and on BBC radio. Around this time he began studying Indian classical music, first with the sitar master Dharambir Singh and later with the sarod players Buddhadev Dasgupta and Prattyush Bannerjee. He founded the fusion group Samay, whose Songs For A Global Journey (2008) is a self-released mix of Indian classical, samba, funk and reggae. In 2008 he also worked with the tabla player Bickram Ghosh on two Bollywood films, Little Zizou and The Diamond Murders, and toured India with an "East meets West" programme.

His only record under his own name is Englobed (Manush Recordings, 2012), seven tracks that include two raga suites, Bhimpalasi and Charukesi, alongside "Cora" and "Arab Spring". Discogs files it under Folk, World, & Country with the style Indian Classical, and it is the clearest statement of his Indian-classical side. His jazz side is easier to hear on the records of other bandleaders. He plays guitar on Sarathy Korwar's debut Day To Day (Ninja Tune, 2016), where Discogs also credits him as a writer on five of the nine tracks; on Korwar's My East Is Your West (Gearbox, 2018) and Night Dreamer Direct-To-Disc Sessions (2020), both credited to Korwar with his Upaj Collective; and on one track ("Coolie") of Korwar's More Arriving (Leaf, 2019). He also plays on the sitarist Roopa Panesar's Atma (Asian Arts Agency, 2023) and, under the spelling Guilliano Modarelli, on the sitarist Purbayan Chatterjee's String Struck (Times Music, 2009).

Kefaya is his main project. Formed in 2012 by Modarelli and MacSween and joined by the drummer Joost Hendrickx, it released Radio International (2016), a debut built around a pirate-radio concept and developed across India, Palestine, Spain and Italy, with Modarelli credited as guitarist, composer, arranger and co-producer. The band won the Songlines Music Award for Best Newcomer in 2017. In 2019 it teamed with the Afghan Hazara singer Elaha Soroor for Songs Of Our Mothers (Bella Union), a set of Afghan women's folk songs that won a Songlines Fusion award and features the flugelhorn player Yazz Ahmed on one track. Their third record, Our Freedoms Must Be Won (Radio International, July 2026), moves toward heavier rock and electronic textures. The band has played the EFG London Jazz Festival, Manchester Jazz Festival, WOMAD, Latitude and Celtic Connections.

Under his own name he led an "Indo Jazz Fusion" quartet at the EFG London Jazz Festival on 13 November 2022, with the saxophonist Chris Williams, the synthesist Wonky Logic and Hendrickx on drums, playing commissioned music that reworked forgotten ragas. He also writes for dance, theatre and film, including the score for the 2016 film Naga The Eternal Yogi. In the 2025/2026 season he appears at the Duisburg Philharmonic, with programmes titled One Beat, One World and Tagore Song Night in May 2026. His publisher is Bucks Music Group, and he has recorded a guitar piece, "Yoga Through the Strings", for Darbar's streaming player.

Eight of the eleven releases on his Discogs page carry the Jazz genre tag, each alongside Folk, World, & Country or Electronic; the rest, including his own Englobed, are filed only under world music.

Modarelli's training is in jazz, and his career sits where jazz overlaps with Indian classical music and world folk traditions, so his work is described in more than one vocabulary. The London Jazz Festival billed his 2022 quartet as Indo Jazz Fusion and called him one of the more interesting musicians to emerge from the world-music scene, with an innovative approach to Indian classical music and jazz. The Duisburg Philharmonic summarizes his sound as jazz, electronics, dub and Indian classical music, and his publisher lists new jazz, electronic music, dub and Indian classical music.

His ties to spiritual jazz are clearest on Korwar's My East Is Your West, a live tribute to 1960s and 1970s spiritual jazz whose tracklist includes "The Creator Has A Masterplan" (Pharoah Sanders) and "Journey In Satchidananda" (Alice Coltrane). Those two are named as repertoire only; no recording credit connects him to either of them. His Indian-classical grounding comes from his study with Singh, Dasgupta and Bannerjee, and his production approach, with radio samples and electronics, is most audible on Kefaya's records.