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Jazz Articles about Piero Umiliani
Piero Umiliani: A Tempo Di Jazz
by Chris May
Considering how many stylish movies were made in Italy in the 1950s and early 1960s, surprisingly few have jazz or jazz-based soundtracks of note; back at the ranch, jazz was Hollywood's go-to cool music. A handful of composers including Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone included jazz in their palettes but jazz was not their primary inspiration. Piero Umiliani, however, was first and foremost a jazz musician. Two of his soundtracks--for Franco Rossi's Smog (1962) and Mario Monicelli's I Soliti Ignoti ...
read morePiero Umiliani: Psichedelica
by Dan McClenaghan
Psichdelica is a fun album. It is music from the pen of Italian movie scorer Piero Umbiliani. The music here composed and recorded for the movie Svenzia Inferno e Paradiso (1968) is in large part a slice of those times. Trippy, very trippy," might be the colloquial 1968 description for the the disc's first four tunes, with before their time" electronics, loopy organ work, a soaring vocal chorus sounding like Gregorian chants that include females in the choir, backed by ...
read morePiero Umiliani: To-Day's Sound
by Douglas Payne
Piero Umiliani scored over 60 films in his native Italy between 1958 and 1981. And it's no secret that Italian films, even as derivative and as unfamiliar as they are to most Americans, are a treasure trove of excellent artistry. The recent now-sound" craze is finally affording Italian film composers like Umiliani their due.
This 1971 double-album-on-one-CD is a prize. It's an instrumental program, similar to the kind Henry Mancini used to release between films. But this one is tougher, ...
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