Gianni Ferrio

Between the film studio, the television orchestra and the recording booth, Gianni Ferrio worked in postwar Italian entertainment. Born in Vicenza, he wrote music for more than a hundred films from the late 1950s onwards — spaghetti westerns, crime pictures, comedies — among them Blood for a Silver Dollar. He worked with Mina for years as composer, arranger and conductor, and set the words of Leo Chiosso and Giancarlo Del Re in Parole, parole. He conducted at Sanremo, at the Eurovision Song Contest and for a long succession of television productions. He died in 2013. Born in 1924, he came to music through the violin and began conducting in the 1940s. The RAI variety programmes he worked on included Teatro 10 and Milleluci, his film assignments were for directors such as Sergio Corbucci, Duccio Tessari and Ermanno Olmi, and Non gioco piu was another of the songs he made with Mina; he wrote for the musical theatre as well and conducted the Roma Sinfonietta.