Piero Piccioni

Before the cinema there was jazz: Piero Piccioni, born in Turin in 1921 and raised within reach of radio and the concert hall, took his bearings from Duke Ellington and Art Tatum and formed the 013 Big Band, which after the fall of Fascism became the first Italian jazz group broadcast nationally. He trained and worked as a lawyer before film drew him into composition, and wrote in the end for more than three hundred productions, the most enduring of them with Francesco Rosi and Alberto Sordi — Salvatore Giuliano, Hands over the City, The Moment of Truth, Swept Away. His scores set large orchestral textures against jazz combos, electric instruments, Latin rhythms and wordless voices, opening an emotional space beside the image rather than illustrating it. He died in 2004.