Astor Pantaleón Piazzolla was an Argentine tango composer, bandoneon player, and arranger. His works revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music. A virtuoso bandoneonist, he regularly performed his own compositions with a variety of ensembles. In 1992, American music critic Stephen Holden described Piazzolla as "the world's foremost composer of Tango music".
Giovanni Rota Rinaldi, better known as Nino Rota, was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor and academic who is best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti. He also composed the music for two of Franco Zeffirelli's Shakespeare films, and for the first two films of Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy, earning the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Godfather Part II (1974).
8+1⁄2 is a 1963 Italian surrealist comedy-drama film directed by Federico Fellini.
Peter Dasent is a New Zealand born composer, pianist and songwriter who has lived and worked in Sydney, Australia since 1981. He played keyboards in the bands Spats, and The Crocodiles. He leads the chamber-jazz group the Umbrellas, is writing a book on the music of Nino Rota and currently works in music composition for film and television, most notably in the children's television series Play School.
Juliet of the Spirits is a 1965 Italian-French fantasy comedy-drama film directed by Federico Fellini and starring Giulietta Masina, Sandra Milo, Mario Pisu, Valentina Cortese, and Valeska Gert. The film is about the visions, memories, and mysticism that help a middle-aged woman find the strength to leave her philandering husband. The film uses "caricatural types and dream situations to represent a psychic landscape." It was Fellini's first feature-length color film, but followed his use of color in The Temptation of Doctor Antonio episode in the portmanteau film Boccaccio '70 (1962). Juliet of the Spirits won the 1966 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Woody Allen loosely adapted it with his 1990 film Alice.
Hal Willner was an American music producer working in recording, films, TV and live events. He was best known for assembling tribute albums and events featuring a wide variety of artists and musical styles. He died during the COVID-19 pandemic due to complications brought on by the virus.
The Harmonia Ensemble is an Italian chamber music group started in 1991 under the direction of Giampiero Bigazzi. Beginning as a trio they have worked with many other musicians in their career. Their repertoire is eclectic, covering music of modern composers, popular, jazz, ethnic styles, and original compositions. Their concerts and albums have featured music by Nino Rota, Gavin Bryars, Frank Zappa, Roger Eno, and the Beatles, among others.
La strada is a 1954 Italian drama film directed by Federico Fellini from his own screenplay co-written with Tullio Pinelli and Ennio Flaiano. The film tells the story of Gelsomina, a simple-minded young woman bought from her mother by Zampanò, a brutish strongman who takes her with him on the road.
Paquito D'Rivera is a Cuban-American clarinetist, saxophonist and composer who plays and composes jazz and classical music.
Luis Enríquez Bacalov was an Argentine-Italian film composer. Early on in his career, he composed scores for Spaghetti Western films. In the early 1970s, he collaborated with Italian progressive rock bands. Bacalov was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Original Score, winning it in 1996 for Il Postino. Bacalov composed significant works for chorus and orchestra. Before his death, he was the artistic director of the Orchestra della Magna Grecia in Taranto, Italy.
The Godfather is the soundtrack from the film of the same name, released in 1972 by Paramount Records, and in 1991 on compact disc by MCA. Unless noted, the cues were composed by Nino Rota and conducted by Carlo Savina. The song "I Have but One Heart" is sung by Al Martino, who performed it in the film as character Johnny Fontane.
Doudou Gouirand is a French jazz saxophonist and composer.
Ekkehard Wölk is a German pianist, arranger, and composer, working in both classical and jazz idioms.
Boccaccio '70 is a 1962 Italian film produced by Carlo Ponti and directed by Mario Monicelli, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti and Vittorio De Sica from an idea by Cesare Zavattini. It is an anthology of four episodes, each by one of the directors, all about a different aspect of morality and love in modern times in the style of Giovanni Boccaccio.
Below is a selected discography for Nino Rota (1911–1979). He was a prolific composer; there are a great many recordings of all of his music—both popular and classical; and it would be impossible to list all of them. Indeed, there are new performances and recordings of Rota's music being made to this day.
"Baltimore Oriole" is a 1942 song written by American composer Hoagy Carmichael with lyrics by Paul Francis Webster and Carmichael. Carmichael said it was his favorite of all the songs he had written.
The soundtrack for the 1968 film Romeo and Juliet was composed and conducted by Nino Rota. It was originally released as a vinyl record, containing nine entries, most notably the song "What Is a Youth", composed by Nino Rota, written by Eugene Walter and performed by Glen Weston. The music score won a Silver Ribbon award of the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists in 1968 and was nominated for two other awards.
Electric Five is an album by Italian jazz trumpeter and composer Enrico Rava recorded in 1994 and released on the Soul Note label.
Amarcord Nino Rota is an album by various artists, recorded as a tribute to composer Nino Rota.
Jonathan Peter Zwartz is a New Zealand-born Australian jazz musician. In the 2018 ARIA Music Awards, he won the Best Jazz Album category for his third album, Animarum, released in 2018.
