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A massively successful and influential film composer, Ennio Morricone is indelibly associated with the distinctively original soundtracks for the "spaghetti western" movies - notably A Fistful Of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West. The son of Italian jazz trumpeter Mario Morricone, he was composing his own music from the age of six and studied trumpet at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia. In the early 1950s he wrote background music for radio dramas, while composing classical pieces for voice and piano. He also played in a jazz band and arranged pop music for the Italian broadcasting service RAI. He is best-known, however, for his film scores for director Sergio Leone's movies through the 1960s, distinguished by the use of gunshots and cracking whips. Numerous other movie scores maintained his reputation as one of the world's greatest living composers, while he occasionally works in the pop genre with artists like Amii Stewart and Mireille Mathieu.
Artist biography compiled by BDS/West 10. All rights reserved
