Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Ennio Morricone

Yo-Yo Ma at 70 Celebrating His Film Music

It’s very hard to believe, but the eternally youthful Yo-Yo Ma turned 70 on Tuesday. This week on “Picture Perfect,” we honor one of the most famous classical musicians in the world with music from three of his film projects.

Ma played cello solos in two scores by John Williams – those for “Seven Years in Tibet” (1997) and “Memoirs of a Geisha” (2005). Of course, Williams being Williams, both scores were nominated for Academy Awards.

But it was Ma’s contribution to Tan Dun’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000) that struck Oscar gold. Dun’s music contributed to what might be termed “The Year of the Dragon,” as Ang Lee’s film received 10 Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. “Crouching Tiger” would slink away with awards for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, and of course Best Original Score.

In addition, Ma recorded a very popular album in 2004 of arrangements for cello and orchestra of film music by Ennio Morricone, with the composer conducting. We’ll round out the hour with one of these, from Morricone’s beloved score to “The Mission” (1986).

I hope you’ll join me, as we salute Yo-Yo Ma at 70, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

BONUS: Ma and Williams on “The Tonight Show,” playing a selection from “Memoirs of a Geisha”

October 10, 2025
Ennio Morricone Monument Unveiled in Italy

A new monument to Ennio Morricone was unveiled in Viggiano, a small town in the province of Potenza, in the southern Italian region of Basilicata, on August 29.

You’ll find details at the link. If you’re not fluent in Italian, you’ll have to use your translator function.

Viggiano, monumento dedicato a Ennio Morricone

Thanks to Mather Pfeiffenberger for the heads-up!

September 2, 2025
Spaghetti Western Music for Father’s Day on KWAX

This week on “Picture Perfect,” for Father’s Day, it’s a fistful of spaghetti for Dad.

We’ll be sampling an hour’s worth of distinctive scores from spaghetti westerns – ultra-cool, hyper-stylized entertainments, made by Italians but often shot in Spain, with their multinational casts heavily dubbed in post-production.

Spaghetti westerns frequently turned the conventions of American westerns on their heads. At any rate, the morality of the traditional western was made much murkier, with antiheroes cast as protagonists, usually motivated by greed and revenge. Especially greed.

As with the American film industry, only more so, when the Italians found something that worked, they went into overdrive, churning out literally dozens of knock-offs and imitations a year, until a given genre had run its financially lucrative course.

To this end, over 600 European westerns were produced between 1960 and 1980. The most influential of these were those directed by Sergio Leone, especially those of the so-called “Dollars” Trilogy – “A Fistful of Dollars,” “For a Few Dollars More,” and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”

These, of course, featured then-rising star Clint Eastwood. His co-star in the second and third films was Lee Van Cleef, who in American westerns such as “High Noon” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” had bit parts as one of the villain’s henchmen, but became an international superstar as the spaghetti western’s most reliable – and bankable – heavy.

We’ll sample from music for the “Dollars” Trilogy, composed by Ennio Morricone, and the “Sabata” Trilogy (which also starred Van Cleef), composed by Marcello Giombini.

Tell Dad it’s all-you-can-eat. We’ll be piling the plates high with music from spaghetti westerns, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

June 13, 2025
Remembering Pope Francis Compassion and Influence

It used to be common sense, handed down by those who learned it through hard experience, never to discuss religion or politics. But I hope it’s uncontroversial to state, regardless of one’s personal convictions or interpretation of Scripture or feelings about the Church, Pope Francis was a good man. He was a voice of compassion in an often cruel world that of late seems to be racing downhill on a banana peel. No one in his position could ever be all things to all people, but the very fact that in at least one of the world’s highest and most influential offices there was an adult with his hand on the tiller was somehow reassuring. May his successor continue to be a moderating influence. R.I.P.

Ennio Morricone, “Mass for Pope Francis”

April 21, 2025
Ennio Morricone Birthday Tribute & “Ennio” on Kanopy

Remembering Ennio Morricone on his birthday.

The streaming platform Kanopy is highlighting Giuseppe Tornatore’s epic Morricone documentary, “Ennio” (2021), among its featured offerings for November.

There was something about the then-young filmmaker that struck a chord with the composer when he agreed to write the music for “Cinema Paradiso” in 1988. The movie went on to win an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and of course the music became one of Morricone’s most beloved scores. Morricone scored every one of Tornatore’s films thereafter. Whenever he pondered retirement in an interview, he was always careful to mention that he might be tempted back by another Tornatore project. His final film score was for Tornatore’s “Correspondence” in 2016.

I posted some observations on the documentary after watching it in March. You’ll pardon me if my “review” wound up being almost as long as the movie!

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1314087782843615&set=a.883855802533484

Access to Kanopy is free with your public library card, but you’ll need to sign up if you don’t already have an account..

View the trailer here:

November 10, 2024

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