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Riz Ortolani

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Riziero Ortolani, Riz Ortolani for short, was an Italian composer, conductor and orchestrator who wrote mainly film music. He was born in 1926 in Pesaro, the youngest of six children. His father gave him a violin when he was four, and later he switched to the flute. He studied at the conservatoire of his native town and then moved to Rome, where he worked with the RAI orchestra. In the 1950s he played in a well-known Italian jazz band and led dance orchestras abroad.

Music and breakthrough

His big breakthrough came in 1962 with Mondo Cane, a controversial pseudo-documentary. The title song More received a Grammy and an Oscar nomination in 1964. After that Ortolani wrote music for films in England and the United States, such as The Yellow Rolls-Royce, The Spy with a Cold Nose and Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell. In total he composed for more than two hundred films and television programmes. Many of them were genre films: spaghetti westerns such as Day of Anger, gialli, Euro-spy films and mondo films. Later he often worked for the director Pupi Avati.

Influence

His music combines soft, melodic orchestral sounds with jazz and the typical Italian film atmosphere of the 1960s. The songs were also covered outside film, for example by Frank Sinatra and Andy Williams. Music by Ortolani returned in Kill Bill, Drive and Django Unchained. In 2013 he received a lifetime achievement award from the World Soundtrack Academy. He died in 2014 in Rome.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to I giorni dell'ira, the music of the 1967 spaghetti western. Notice how a cinematic melody and a driving rhythm evoke the feeling of a duel.

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

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Mentioned in other articles

See also

Categories: ArtistsSpaghetti Western