31/08/2022
Astronauts in a deadly land
Under God's wrath
Stefano Marcucci (Rome, 1947) is an Italian musician and composer; has been part of bands like the Ancients (Manuel De Sica, Bruno
Biriaco, Federico D'Andrea), The Myosotis (with Federico D'Andrea), has
made progressive music with Paolo Casa and Paolo
Ferrara, among others
He composed the music for over 200 performances were staged in the
Italian and foreign theaters, working with directors such as Luigi
Squarzina, Franco Brusati, Giorgio Albertazzi, Gabriele Lavia, Vittorio
Gassman, Irene Papas and composing songs for artists such as Renzo
Arbore, Milva, Mauritius Micheli and the trio satirical Marchesini,
Lopez, Solenghi.
For television and radio has created music for musicals, drama,
variety, often taking part, directly, to run television and radio
programs.
He has written numerous scores for films, getting important awards.
Lost in a coral forest
Bruno Zambrini (April 5, 1935) is an Italian musician and record producer. Zambrini graduated in composition at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory; in the 1960s he became a successful composer of pop songs, notably signing several hits by Gianni Morandi and Patty Pravo's "La bambola. Also active as a record producer, Zambrini composed many musical film scores, often collaborating with Andrea and Paolo Amati.
19/08/2022
A song in defense of the dispossessed
Selda Bağcan is a Turkish female folk singer and guitarist; born in 1948 in Muğla, Turkey. Her career as a professional musician started in 1971, during her final
year at the university The six singles she released that year, in which she interpreted
traditional Turkish folk songs in a strong, emotional voice, accompanied
by a simple acoustic guitar or bağlama, carried her to national fame.
Many of her songs carried strong social criticism and solidarity with the poor and the working class, which made her especially popular among the left-wing activists and sympathisers during the politically polarized 1970s.
She experimented with rock and roll and with synthetic and electronic sounds in her LPs, although her musical style remained firmly rooted in the folk tradition. After the 1980 Turkish Coup d'État, she was persecuted by the military rulers due to her political songs, and was imprisoned three times between 1981 and 1984. Her passport was confiscated and held by the authorities until 1987, which, among other things, prevented her from attending the first WOMAD Reading festival in 1986. Partly thanks to pressure from WOMAD, her passport was returned in 1987 and she immediately started a European tour, giving concerts in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom in the same year.
Since then, she has produced several albums and given concerts in many cities in Turkey and all over the world, and remains active in the Turkish musical scene. Bağcan currently lives in Istanbul and runs the music production company Majör Müzik Yapım.
A break for mental work
Giuliano Sorgini is an Italian composer and musician who initially created music for TV
and in the '70s switched to cinema; he mixed beat, prog, funk and psychedelia with library music.
A night to collect bone scraps
Andrzej Waldemar Korzyński (1940 - 2022) was a Polish composer whose work ranged from some of the biggest hits
from the 1960's to the early nineties, a popular children's musical
("Akademia Pana Kleksa") and scores for some of the best Polish films of
the second half of the 20th century, including Andrzej Wajda's (The Birch Wood, Man of Marble) and Andrzej Żuławski's (The Devil, Possession).
Born in Warsaw, Korzyński graduated from the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in 1964; also he was a member of the Polish Film Academy.
Andrzej Korzynski - PossessionEnjoying the song of the Amperemeter
Alessandro Alessandroni (1925, Rome, Italy - 2017, Rome, Italy) was an Italian composer, arranger, vocalist,
whistler, conductor and multi-instrumentalist (guitar, sitar, keyboards,
mandolin, mandocello, accordion, banjo, flute, harmonica, jew's harp,
recorder, melodica and ocarina). He was the founder of the vocal
ensemble I Cantori Moderni di Alessandroni. Husband of Margaret Courtney-Clarke. Previously married to Giulia Alessandroni (Kema) until her death in 1984.
Also collaborated with his childhood friend Ennio Morricone on a number of soundtracks for Spaghetti Westerns. Morricone's orchestration often calls for an unusual combination of instruments, voices, and whistling. Alessandroni's twangy guitar riff is central to the main theme for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Alessandroni can be heard as the whistler on the soundtracks for Sergio Leone's films, including A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, Once Upon a Time in the West, and Pervirella. He also collaborated with Morricone in scoring the 1974 film Around the World with Peynet's Lovers.
He founded the octet vocal group I Cantori Moderni in 1961. The group, which included his wife, Giulia De Mutiis, performed wordless vocals on several Italian movie soundtracks. Most notably, I Cantori Moderni are featured on the song "Mah Nà Mah Nà", written by Piero Umiliani for the 1968 Luigi Scattini mondo film Svezia, inferno e paradiso and popularized on The Muppets Show.
Alessandro has also composed film scores, including Any Gun Can Play (1967), Johnny Hamlet (1968), The Reward's Yours... The Man's Mine (1969), Lady Frankenstein (1971), The Devil's Nightmare (1971), The Mad Butcher (1971), Seven Hours of Violence (1973), Sinbad and the Caliph of Baghdad (1973), Poker in Bed (1974), White Fang and the Hunter (1975), Blood and Bullets (1976), L'adolescente (1976), La professoressa di scienze naturali (1976), The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976), Women's Camp 119 (1977), Killer Nun (1978), L'imbranato (1979), and Trinity Goes East (1998).
Alessandro Alessandroni - IndustrialWalking along the edge of the Andes
Kema (1938 - 1984) was the pioneering female Italian film music Composer/Arranger/Multi-instrumentalist Giulia De Muittis (aka Mrs. Alessandro Alessandroni). She composeed and performed this rare undercover pseudo-ethnological studio sessions made under her experimental alter ego Kema (The Pawnshop) combining the ethos of Can's "Ethnological Forgery Series" (EFS) with the studio trickery of Delia Derbyshire and unshakable credentials as one of the founding figures of Giallo film music and Italian psych soundtracks.
Perhaps best known amongst fans of
Italian production music and Giallo movie soundtracks as the wife of the
legendary Alessandro Alessandroni, composer, vocalist and
multi-instrumentalist Giulia De Muittis was an equally formidable force
who emerged from the formative years of the aforementioned anti-genres
and rose to a monarchic status within the country's vibrant, and seldom
rivalled musical secret society.
Defying bad luck
Durul Gence is a Turkish conductor and drummer; was born in Ankara in 1940. In 1970 he became
famous with his album "Şeyh Şamil." With several music groups such as
"Istanbul Express" and "Asia Minor Mission", Gence performed for
renowned artists such as Ajda Pekkan, Rüçhan Çamay, Gönül Yazar, Alpay,
Tanju Okan, and Ertan Anapa. Gence has played with internationally
famous artists including Herb Geller, Sonny Sharock, Bertice Reading,
Four Pennies, Lili Ivanova, Mads Vinding, Peter Bastian, Anders Koppel,
and Harbie Mann. Gence Continues to teach at Middle East Technical
University and Hacettepe University. Currently, he performs with the
group DG-4 in Turkey and abroad.
06/08/2022
The curse of eternal night
Acanthus was a French Psychedelic band formed by Daniel Buffet,
Francis Bendichou,
Gérard Sallette,
Guy Ouly and Jean Vazon.
A symphony in neural fluxes
Ami Shavit (Tel Aviv, 1934) is an Israeli multimedia and electronic music artist; Shavit is a reclusive multimedia artist with a fascination for philosophy,
technology and sound. A personally devised meditative technique, it is
the result of a spiritual and artistic exploration to both overcome the
psychological trauma experienced as a conscripted medic during the Yom
Kippur War and an ambition to push the boundaries of the then fledgling
physiological concept of biofeedback whilst utilising the burgeoning
domestic synthesiser technology of the late 60's and early 70's.
05/08/2022
About a skin pride
Nahid Akhtar is a Pakistani playback singer. She is tagged as the "Nightingale of Pakistan". She was the top Lollywood playback singer during the second half of 70s and 80s. She won 3 Nigar Awards and a Pride of Performance in 2007.
Akhtar has recorded songs in a range of styles, including Pakistani film music, Pop, Ghazals, Traditional pakistani classical music, Punjabi folk songs, Qawwalis, Naat & Hamds & Others.
Nahid Akhtar was discovered by veteran musician. M. Ashraf as a teenage
sensation in the mid 70s; inaugural released film was "Nanha Farishta" in 1974 and in the same
year she climb to the top with super hit songs in film "Shama".
Her stylistic mastery and trade marked television appearances continued through the 1970s; increasingly, though, her attention was turned to the cinema. Films
became the topmost priority to Nahid while television went down to the
next level. Finally, in the mid 80s she left the film scene as a singer.
Flying with the Gods of Palenque
(Peter Thomas was a German composer and arranger, born 1st
December 1925 in
Breslau, Silesia (today Poland) and came a little later to Berlin, where
he remained up to his beginnings as a film musician. He wrote a lots of
soundtracks for movies and television series. His music oscillates
between easy listening/lounge and electronic/space-age styles. The
musician is abroadly well known as director of the incredible musical group The Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra. He died 17th May 2020 in Lugano, Switzerland).
A path of violence
Bernard Herrmann (1911 - 1975) was an American composer and conductor best known for his work in composing for films. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest film composers.
An Academy Award-winner (for The Devil and Daniel Webster, 1941, Herrmann mainly is known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo. He also composed scores for many other films, including Citizen Kane, Anna and the King of Siam, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Cape Fear, Fahrenheit 451, and Taxi Driver. He worked extensively in radio drama (composing for Orson Welles), composed the scores for several fantasy films by Ray Harryhausen, and many TV programs, including Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone and Have Gun - Will Travel.
As well as his many film scores, Herrmann wrote several concert pieces, including his Symphony in 1941; the opera Wuthering Heights; the cantata Moby Dick (1938), dedicated to Charles Ives; and For the Fallen, a tribute to the soldiers who died in battle in World War II.
Herrmann's involvement with electronic musical instruments dates back to 1951, when he used the theremin in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Robert B. Sexton has noted that this score involved the use of treble and bass theremins (played by Dr. Samuel Hoffmann and Paul Shure), electric strings, bass, prepared piano, and guitar together with various pianos and harps, electronic organs, brass, and percussion, and that Herrmann treated the theremins as a truly orchestral section.
Herrmann was a sound consultant on The Birds, which made extensive use of an electronic instrument called the mixturtrautonium, performed by Oskar Sala on the film's soundtrack. Herrmann used several electronic instruments on his score of It's Alive, as well as the Moog synthesizer for the main themes in Endless Night and Sisters.
Bernard Herrmann passed away at December 24th, 1975, the day that he finished the score for Taxi Driver.
Here02/08/2022
Spending adventures across the Indus
Sohail Rana is a Pakistani music composer for films and television. He was introduced by actor Waheed Murad in Pakistan film industry and gained popularity when singer Ahmed Rushdi sang his compositions in such films as Armaan and Doraha. He is now based in Canada.
Sohail Rana - Khyber Mail
Enjoying life to the full
Merit Hemmingson (born August 30, 1940) is a Swedish organist,
composer and singer; she became famous in the late 1960's for her modern
pop arrangements of Swedish folk music.
Blood red roses on bed
Luboš Fišer (1935 - 1999) was a Czech composer, born in Prague. He was known both for his soundtracks and chamber music. From 1952 to 1956 he studied composition at the Prague Conservatory as a pupil of Emil Hlobil.
Honoring the ancient goddesses
Bruno Spoerri (16 August 1935, Zürich) is a Swiss musician and psychologist.
He is active in electronic music since 1965, mostly in film music and TV
jingles and concerts with interactive computer devices and multiple
collaborations with various artists in the fields of jazz and electronic
music. He is also running a studio in Zurich, Studio Für Elektronische Musik Spoerri.
Themes for thieves in gunshots
(Pierre Raph was a French composer and musician; he delivered some
obscure, experimental, dark and erotic free-rock/psychedelia
soundtracks like "Curse of the Living Dead," "Rose of Iron"
and "Schoolgirl Hitchhikers," which were all Jean Rollin films. He died in 2010).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)