Piero Umiliani

Alongside composers Piero Piccioni, Riz Ortolani, and Armando Sciascia, Piero Umiliani is among the unsung heroes of soundtrack music. Incorporating designs like jazz, easy hearing/lounge, rock and roll, funk, and bossa nova to some genre generally dominated by orchestral ratings, he penned a few of the most excellent film music through the ’60s and ’70s with over 150 game titles under his belt. Delivered in Florence in 1926, his fascination with music sprang from an extremely early age, resulting in his enrollment within the conservatory of his indigenous town. After shifting to Rome and playing within a jazz octet, Umiliani inaugurated his profession in cinema using the documentary Piccola Collection Americana per Quattro Ance (1954), accompanied by a string of commissions generally for Italian exploitation films of small repercussion. His soundtrack towards the 1968 pseudo-documentary Svezia, Inferno e Paradiso earned worldwide acclaim because of the inclusion from the celebrated strike “Ma Nah Ma Nah,” afterwards featured within the Muppet Present. Some remarkable game titles in Umiliani’s discography consist of La Ragazza Dalla Pelle di Luna (1974), La Morte Bussa Credited Volte (1969), Il Corpo (1974), and 5 Bambole per la Luna d’Agosto (1970), an indisputable masterpiece from the genre merging outlandish samba, Hammond-centered jazz, large brass areas, harpsichords, and sexy feminine choruses in an excellent collection which has echoes in the task of eccentric pop rings like Stereolab and Pram or Mr. Bungle and related tasks. In 2000, the Italian label Easy Tempo come up with a compilation of Umiliani’s digital and synthesizer music beneath the name Musicaelettronica, Vol. 1. Umiliani passed away on Feb 14, 2001.