Umiliani, Piero

(1926-2001)

   Musician and film composer. A passionate jazz enthusiast from his earliest years, Umiliani nevertheless graduated in law before going on to study at the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory in Florence, where he majored in fugue and counterpoint. In 1952 he moved from his native Florence to Rome, where he worked as an arranger for Armando Trovajoli and soon thereafter recorded his first album for RCA, Dixieland in Naples. In 1955 he was hired by the RAI studios as resident pianist, conductor, and arranger. His first composition for film was the groundbreaking jazz score he provided for Mario Monicelli's I soliti ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street, 1958), on which he featured the legendary American trumpeter Chet Baker. He subsequently worked with many of the major Italian directors and across all the popular film genres, from the commedia all'italiana and spy films to Western all'italiana and the giallo. One of his most highly regarded film scores was the orchestral jazz soundtrack for Siro Marcellini's crime thriller La legge dei gangsters (Gangsters'Law, 1969). At the other end of the scale, his simple but catchy "Mahna Mahna" theme, originally written for the mondo-style documentary Svezia, Inferno e Paradiso (Sweden Heaven and Hell, 1968), received a new lease on life when performed by the Muppets in 1977 and has been revived in countless versions ever since. After penning the music for some 150 feature films, documentaries, and television programs, in the early 1980s Umiliani suffered a severe brain hemorrhage and only recovered the ability to play music a few years before his death.

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira