Originally Posted by
Udi Koomran
here is a part of an interview with Bishop regarding the Crime & Dissonance compilation he was involved with
Q:What was the research-archival process like?
A:
"The process is and has been all about spending too much time and money to support the addiction Morricone is for me. I don’t recommend it for everyone, but once one is obsessed, it’s beyond one’s control. I have most of what I know to exist in a particular period of his. I am most interested in the years 1963-1980.
There are many more unheard Morricone scores/tracks sitting around in locked vaults and other mysterious locales.
I would say that a definitive collection of his work would have to be at least 50 hours of material, which I could hardly say for anyone else other than Sun Ra.
After all, he’s the only composer I know of who has an appreciation society that released a bi-annual magazine dedicated to him for 15 years along with a 500-page discography of his work that is outdated by 14 years now.
And it’s quite absurd that many Americans are familiar with John Williams and Danny Elfman, yet they’ve never heard of the great Ennio Morricone!"
Q:I’m wondering how much of the usable material was left out.
A:" One must remember that Morricone has appeared on thousands of recordings as a composer, conductor, arranger, or musician, so, in essence, most people are left out of even realizing what the man has accomplished, and there’s no other way to begin to understand it unless one is willing to spend a huge amount of time immersed in it.
He is one of the greatest artistic minds of history, and I personally, and with full-on intentional arrogance, know that his work dwarfs any other film composer that can be named."
Q:I hear a million sonic references, everything from Varese to Miles. I’m curious as to what yours are.
A: Bach to Cage, Middle Eastern to Heavy Rock to Free Jazz …Yes, there’s a million in there somewhere!
Q: Is it even possible to grasp the full breadth of Morricone and what he’s done over the last half-century?
A: I’m a lot closer than most, but only the Maestro himself knows the whole deal. Many people have no idea that, along with scoring films, he spent the first half of the ’60s composing, arranging, and conducting hundreds of songs for the most famous Italian pop singers of the period like Gianni Morandi, Rita, Christy, Gino Paoli, Mina, Neil Sedaka, Paul Anka–the list goes on and on. And his arrangements for them are off the scale and much more advanced and maverick than what was happening elsewhere at the time.
Some have called him the father of the modern pop arrangement. No one was more clever at arranging pop songs than Morricone from 1962-1966. Most of those tracks are extremely hard to find (which you’d have to hear to see what I mean), but some have been reissued on BMG Japanese CD box sets–others are probably available on Italian ’60s CD comps you could still find in Italy, but they don’t always list Morricone as the arranger/composer/conductor on the inserts. Throw in his 400-plus soundtrack scores for film and TV, his improv/experimental work, chamber music, and concert music, and you’ve got an endless research project staring you in the face.
) "lines" seem to be so clearly countoured
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks