Nando Di Modugno (full name Ferdinando Di Modugno) is a guitarist from Bisceglie, on the Adriatic coast of Puglia, who has built parallel careers in classical and jazz guitar for more than three decades. His earliest Discogs credits place him as a working session guitarist on the local Bari-area pop and folk-song scene while still young: acoustic guitar and mandolin on the singer-songwriter record Bari Sole & Cerase (1981), electric guitar on Lello Ricco's disco single Cigno Bianco (1982), and further local sessions through Solo Grazie (1982), San Francesco (1982) and Bari Graffiti (1987). None of that early work is jazz; it documents a young guitarist earning credits in his hometown's recording scene before his classical and jazz identities took shape.

His formal training followed what the regional press consistently describes as the Segovia lineage. He took his diploma with high honors at the Conservatory of Bari under Linda Calsolaro, and continued his studies with other pupils in Andres Segovia's tradition, among them Alirio Diaz, Jose Tomas and, in particular, Oscar Ghiglia. He now teaches guitar at that same Bari conservatory (referred to in different sources as "Nino Rota" and, under an earlier name, "N. Piccinni"). On the classical side, his credits include appearances with orchestras such as the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the Teatro San Carlo, and in 2025 he played second guitar, alongside guitarist Nicolo Sasso, on a Robert and Clara Schumann transcription project, Dichterliebe and Other Transcriptions for Guitar (Da Vinci Classics), recorded at Villa Traversa in Bari.

His jazz identity centers on two long-running partnerships built in Puglia. With soprano and tenor saxophonist Roberto Ottaviano he formed the duo billed as Pinturas, an "ethnic-rooted jazz and improvisation" project the two have carried for years; Discogs confirms Di Modugno's guitar credit across Un Dio Clandestino (2008, Dodicilune), Change the World (2017, Nel Gioco del Jazz, with pianist Mirko Signorile as guest), Secret Change (2020, Culture del Mondo, on which the pair guest on Fortressa's album) and A Che Punto E La Notte (2023, Dodicilune). With clarinetist Gabriele Mirabassi and bassist Pierluigi Balducci he formed a trio billed under all three names, releasing Amori Sospesi (2015, Dodicilune), Tabacco e Caffe (recorded 2019, released 2021, Dodicilune) and Girasoli (2022, Fone, recorded for the label's audiophile Super Audio CD series around the 2021 Fone Music Festival Piaggio edition). Amori Sospesi was reviewed in the UK jazz press by Jazzwise.

He also leads his own working group, Cercle Magique Trio, with bassist Viz Maurogiovanni and drummer Gianlivio Liberti, a unit the trio has described as a decade of experimenting with fusions of classicism, jazz and fusion before releasing its debut album Cercle Magique (2017, Dodicilune), reviewed in Musica Jazz. Beyond his own groups, Di Modugno is a recurring session guitarist on Puglia jazz-label dates: Fabio Accardi's Whispers (2012, Mordente Records, with saxophonist Gaetano Partipilo, pianist Mirko Signorile and bassist Giorgio Vendola), Camillo Pace's Uhuru Wetu (2010, with Roberto Ottaviano), Michele Perruggini's Attraverso La Nebbia (2015, with Mirabassi and Partipilo), accordionist Vince Abbracciante's Sincretico (2017) and Terranima (2019, the latter again with Mirabassi), Cesare Pastanella's Afrodiaspora project The Round Trip (2019), singer Serena Spedicato's spoken-word recording Io Che Amo Solo Te. Le Voci Di Genova (2022), and flutist Aldo Di Caterino's Amore (2023). He also plays guitar on one track of KZ Musik CD 12 (2009, Documents), part of Francesco Lotoro's project recording music composed by prisoners in Nazi-era camps, a classical rather than jazz credit.

Press profiles of Di Modugno also name collaborations with trumpeter Fabrizio Bosso, Swiss drummer Pierre Favre, saxophonist Jay Rodriguez and vocalist Bobby McFerrin, alongside film composers Ennio Morricone and Nicola Piovani; none of these appear in his Discogs credits, so they are noted here as reported rather than independently verified. He is not to be confused with the singer-songwriter Domenico Modugno, a different and much more widely known artist with whom he shares only a surname.

Di Modugno's catalog splits cleanly along the line his own 2023 Bisceglie masterclass title drew directly: "La chitarra tra jazz e classico," the guitar between jazz and classical. The classical side runs through the Segovia-descended conservatory tradition, formal orchestral engagements, and, as recently as 2025, a Schumann transcription recording. The jazz side is built almost entirely in small, largely drummerless formats: a saxophone-guitar duo with Ottaviano, and an acoustic clarinet-guitar-bass trio with Mirabassi and Balducci that Discogs and reviewers tag Jazz and Contemporary Jazz throughout. That trio's catalog leans toward a Mediterranean-to-Latin-American repertoire, pairing originals with Brazilian and Latin American material by Toninho Horta, Egberto Gismonti, Jacob do Bandolim and Pablo Milanes alongside Henry Mancini and Pat Metheny covers, which is where the Discogs "Latin Jazz" tag on the trio's related sideman dates (Sincretico, Amore) comes from. Cercle Magique Trio, his one electric-guitar-led jazz vehicle with a full drum kit, is the exception to the acoustic-chamber pattern and draws its own reviewers' language toward fusion.