Da Vinci Classics
Francesca Badalini, Antonio Zambrini, Paolino Dalla Porta, Manhu Roche, Aurora Bisanti, Lydia Colona, Andrea Grumelli, Francesca Lipari, Emiliana Parenzi Colombo, Davide Martinelli, Gianfranco Messina, Matteo Zurletti, Giulia Monti, Fabrizio Rizzo, Silvia De Brasi
Physical and Digital Release: 13 October 2017
Francesca Badalini and Antonio Zambrini bring classical and jazz perspectives to music for the cinema, celebrating the film heritage of Milan's Fondazione Cineteca Italiana through original scores and arrangements.
Francesca Badalini · Antonio Zambrini · with Paolino Dalla Porta, double bass, and Manhu Roche, drums
13.67€
Shared Souls · 21 tracks
Complete track listing from the original booklet. Durations verified on Spotify and Apple Music; composer and arrangement credits distinguish the medley and trio improvisation.
Andrea Grumelli is a bassist whose work spans jazz, progressive rock and music for cinema. He studied at the Civica Scuola di Musica Salvatore Licitra in Cinisello Balsamo with Roberto Gelli and graduated with the highest marks in jazz electric bass from the Giuseppe Nicolini Conservatoire in Piacenza, studying with Riccardo Fioravanti. He collaborates with Francesca Badalini in film concerts combining classical and contemporary sounds with improvisation. His projects include MS Vibes Trio, Pitomba Quartet, The RED Project and Aether.
Antonio Zambrini is a jazz pianist, flautist and composer whose creative work extends from his own compositions to new interpretations of existing music. His recordings include jazz readings of music by Nino Rota, Gabriel Fauré and Procol Harum.
He has recorded with drummer Eliot Zigmund on Long Distance (2012), with Rita Marcotulli on La conversazione (2014), and with Lee Konitz on three albums for Philology in 2008. His earlier albums, released between 1998 and 2005, centred on his own compositions and attracted the attention of Italian jazz critics. Other musicians have subsequently performed his pieces: Stefano Bollani, for example, included Antonia on his ECM album Piano Solo.
Zambrini’s albums have been released by Abeat Jazz Records, Splasc(h) Records and Philology. He has taught jazz piano and related subjects at conservatories in Bari, La Spezia, Brescia, Como, Parma and Verona, as well as Milan.
His collaborators on Shared Souls include bassist Paolino Dalla Porta, also known for his work with Oregon, and drummer Manhu Roche, a long-standing collaborator of Michel Petrucciani.
Aurora Bisanti studied violin at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatoire in Milan with Daniele Gay and pursued further training in Innsbruck and with Dejan Bogdanovich. She completed advanced violin studies at the Guido Cantelli Conservatoire in Novara with Francesca Monego. Her orchestral work includes the Haydn Orchestra, the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, I Pomeriggi Musicali and Milano Classica. She also performs chamber music, teaches violin and collaborates with Francesca Badalini in concert and recording projects.
Davide Martinelli is credited on Shared Souls (Da Vinci Classics, C00083) as a performer on percussion.
Emiliana Parenzi Colombo is credited on Shared Souls (Da Vinci Classics, C00083) as a performer on flute.
Fabrizio Rizzo is credited on Shared Souls (Da Vinci Classics, C00083) as a performer on accordion.
Francesca Badalini graduated in piano from the Genoa Conservatory, in composition from the Civica Scuola di Musica Claudio Abbado in Milan, and in Classics from the Università degli Studi di Milano. She continued her studies through masterclasses in chamber music with Paul Badura-Skoda and Alfons Kontarsky, in music for theatre and cinema—including Nicola Piovani’s course at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena—and in improvisation and jazz piano.
She teaches piano, composition, improvisation and film music, with work at the Scuola Internazionale Musicale di Milano, the Università del Tempo Libero in Melzo, the Politecnico di Milano and the Dreamers film school in Como. She also leads music workshops for children. Her activity encompasses music for theatre, audiobooks, short films, documentaries and silent-film DVDs, as well as live improvisation.
Since 1999, she has collaborated regularly with the Cineteca Italiana as a pianist accompanying silent films. This has led her to compose and perform live scores throughout Italy and in France, Switzerland and Tunisia. Venues include Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Spazio Oberdan in Milan, the Museo del Cinema in Turin, Teatro della Tosse in Genoa and the Cinémathèque de Nice. She has also appeared at the Locarno Film Festival, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, the Festival du Cinéma Italien in Annecy and Castellinaria in Bellinzona.
She has written music for award-winning animated shorts by Julia Gromskaya, receiving five Best Soundtrack prizes, and for Simone Massi, winner of a David di Donatello award for animation. In 2012, she composed the music for Massi’s animated opening sequence for the Venice Film Festival. Her first album, Musiche in bianco e nero, released in 2010, collects her film scores. In the same year, she received the Bianca d’Aponte award for Best Female Italian Soundtrack Composer. Her work in radio includes presenting music programmes on Radio Popolare; its later programme Labirinti musicali ran from 2014 to 2023.
Francesca Lipari is credited on Shared Souls (Da Vinci Classics, C00083) as a performer on flute.
Gianfranco Messina holds qualifications in piano, violin and composition, obtained in Milan. His compositions have been performed at the Palazzina Liberty, Villa Litta, Teatro Filodrammatici and Circolo Ufficiali in Milan, including events for Lions Club Milano and under the patronage of Expo 2015. His musical research explores new perspectives and colours within a neotonal language.
Giulia Monti is an Italian cellist who graduated from the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatoire in Milan in 2005, subsequently undertaking advanced studies in Rennes and completing a postgraduate cello qualification in Milan in 2007. Her work ranges from orchestral and chamber music to popular and electronic music. Since 2008 she has performed with Malika Ayane, and her collaborations include Francesco Sarcina, Andrea Bocelli and Dardust. She also teaches cello and piano at Mondomusica in Milan.
Lydia Colona graduated in clarinet from the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatoire in Como in 2001, studying with C. Carrara. She pursued further training with Thomas Friedli and Alessandro Carbonare at the Accademia Perosi and attended the orchestral training programme of the Accademia Teatro alla Scala from 2003 to 2005. Alongside chamber and orchestral performance, she teaches clarinet. Her work with Francesca Badalini and Cineteca Milano includes live accompaniment for silent films, appearances in Pordenone and Annecy, and recordings for cinema.
French drummer Manhu Roche, born in 1958, studied jazz with his brother, guitarist Philippe Roche, and developed his musicianship alongside Michel Petrucciani and drummer Tox Drohard. He moved to Italy in 1982, working there for fourteen years. Returning to France in 1996, he joined Petrucciani’s Graffiti Quartet and subsequently performed with the pianist in groups including bassist Detlev Beier and saxophonist Steve Grossman, touring with him until 1999.
His collaborators include Pharoah Sanders, Chet Baker, Benny Golson, Cassandra Wilson, Joe Lovano, Dave Liebman, Kenny Wheeler, John Taylor and Richard Galliano. His touring has taken him through Europe, Africa and Asia. In 2005, he led a project bringing thirty Cambodian drummers together with his trio, featuring Stefano Cantini and Luc Fenoli. He has contributed to more than sixty recordings and taught in Rome and Siena, as well as through masterclasses and workshops.
Matteo Maria Zurletti is an Italian cellist born in Rome in 1969 into a family of musicians. He began studying at six with G. Martorana and developed his chamber-music practice with his pianist mother and violinist sister, with whom he founded Ensemble Igrà. He has performed with Ensemble Algoritmo and Dèdalo Ensemble, specialising in contemporary repertoire. His concert work has taken him throughout Italy and abroad, and includes broadcasts on Rai Radio 3. He has worked with the Teatro Lirico Sperimentale in Spoleto as a teacher and principal cellist, and plays an eighteenth-century instrument by Bartolomeo Karner.
Paolino Dalla Porta is an Italian double bassist and composer whose work has combined jazz, improvisation and Mediterranean musical traditions since the late 1970s. A co-founder of Nexus, he has collaborated extensively with Stefano Battaglia, Enrico Rava and Paolo Fresu, and joined Oregon in 2015. His international partnerships include Dave Liebman, Kenny Wheeler, Lee Konitz, Norma Winstone and John Abercrombie. Alongside a substantial discography as both leader and collaborator, he has composed for film and television. His educational work includes Siena Jazz and the conservatories of Milan and Brescia. He performs with Eloisa Manera, Zach Brock and Federica Michisanti on Double Us.
Silvia De Brasi plays piano alongside Francesca Badalini in Mother and Daughter on Shared Souls (Da Vinci Classics, C00083). The four-hand piece is described in the original booklet as a transcription of an improvisation.
Anthony Newley was an English actor, singer and songwriter whose work spans musical theatre and cinema. With Leslie Bricusse, he wrote songs for Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), including Pure Imagination, which has become a widely performed standard.
Antonio Zambrini is a jazz pianist, flautist and composer whose creative work extends from his own compositions to new interpretations of existing music. His recordings include jazz readings of music by Nino Rota, Gabriel Fauré and Procol Harum.
He has recorded with drummer Eliot Zigmund on Long Distance (2012), with Rita Marcotulli on La conversazione (2014), and with Lee Konitz on three albums for Philology in 2008. His earlier albums, released between 1998 and 2005, centred on his own compositions and attracted the attention of Italian jazz critics. Other musicians have subsequently performed his pieces: Stefano Bollani, for example, included Antonia on his ECM album Piano Solo.
Zambrini’s albums have been released by Abeat Jazz Records, Splasc(h) Records and Philology. He has taught jazz piano and related subjects at conservatories in Bari, La Spezia, Brescia, Como, Parma and Verona, as well as Milan.
His collaborators on Shared Souls include bassist Paolino Dalla Porta, also known for his work with Oregon, and drummer Manhu Roche, a long-standing collaborator of Michel Petrucciani.
Erik Satie: (b Honfleur, 17 May 1866; d Paris, 1 July 1925). French composer. He was an iconoclast, a man of ideas who looked constantly towards the future. Debussy christened him ‘the precursor’ because of his early harmonic innovations, though he surpassed his friend’s conception of him by anticipating most of the ‘advances’ of 20th-century music – from organized total chromaticism to minimalism. To some extent he made a virtue of his technical limitations, but his painstaking quest for perfection in simplicity, coupled with his ironic wit and his shrewd awareness of developments in other fields of contemporary art, made him the personification of the wartime esprit nouveau in France.
Francesca Badalini graduated in piano from the Genoa Conservatory, in composition from the Civica Scuola di Musica Claudio Abbado in Milan, and in Classics from the Università degli Studi di Milano. She continued her studies through masterclasses in chamber music with Paul Badura-Skoda and Alfons Kontarsky, in music for theatre and cinema—including Nicola Piovani’s course at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena—and in improvisation and jazz piano.
She teaches piano, composition, improvisation and film music, with work at the Scuola Internazionale Musicale di Milano, the Università del Tempo Libero in Melzo, the Politecnico di Milano and the Dreamers film school in Como. She also leads music workshops for children. Her activity encompasses music for theatre, audiobooks, short films, documentaries and silent-film DVDs, as well as live improvisation.
Since 1999, she has collaborated regularly with the Cineteca Italiana as a pianist accompanying silent films. This has led her to compose and perform live scores throughout Italy and in France, Switzerland and Tunisia. Venues include Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Spazio Oberdan in Milan, the Museo del Cinema in Turin, Teatro della Tosse in Genoa and the Cinémathèque de Nice. She has also appeared at the Locarno Film Festival, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, the Festival du Cinéma Italien in Annecy and Castellinaria in Bellinzona.
She has written music for award-winning animated shorts by Julia Gromskaya, receiving five Best Soundtrack prizes, and for Simone Massi, winner of a David di Donatello award for animation. In 2012, she composed the music for Massi’s animated opening sequence for the Venice Film Festival. Her first album, Musiche in bianco e nero, released in 2010, collects her film scores. In the same year, she received the Bianca d’Aponte award for Best Female Italian Soundtrack Composer. Her work in radio includes presenting music programmes on Radio Popolare; its later programme Labirinti musicali ran from 2014 to 2023.
Irving Berlin
(b Mogilyov, 11 May 1888; d New York, 22 Sept 1989). American composer of Russian birth. The son of an impoverished Jewish cantor, he was taken to America at the age of five. His father died when he was 13, and a year later he ran away from home, rather than be a burden to his mother. He sang for pennies outside cabarets, became a chorus boy, a stooge in vaudeville, a song plugger and a singing waiter. Berlin had no formal musical training, but taught himself to play the piano, if only in one key, F. He began churning out songs, usually serving as his own lyricist, and finally caught America’s ear with Alexander’s Ragtime Band in 1911.
Léo Daniderff (1878–1943), born Ferdinand Niquet, was a French composer. His Je cherche après Titine became internationally familiar through Charlie Chaplin’s performance in Modern Times (1936), where it is often called the Nonsense Song.
Leslie Bricusse was a songwriter, lyricist and composer for musical theatre and film. His partnership with Anthony Newley produced the songs for Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), including Pure Imagination. His screen work also includes Doctor Dolittle.
Paolino Dalla Porta is an Italian double bassist and composer whose work has combined jazz, improvisation and Mediterranean musical traditions since the late 1970s. A co-founder of Nexus, he has collaborated extensively with Stefano Battaglia, Enrico Rava and Paolo Fresu, and joined Oregon in 2015. His international partnerships include Dave Liebman, Kenny Wheeler, Lee Konitz, Norma Winstone and John Abercrombie. Alongside a substantial discography as both leader and collaborator, he has composed for film and television. His educational work includes Siena Jazz and the conservatories of Milan and Brescia. He performs with Eloisa Manera, Zach Brock and Federica Michisanti on Double Us.
Ryuichi Sakamoto was a Japanese composer and musician whose work included music for cinema. His score for Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1983) gave rise to Forbidden Colours, his collaboration with David Sylvian. The piece is heard in Francesca Badalini’s arrangement on Shared Souls.
Vangelis (1943–2022), born Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, was a Greek composer and keyboard player whose work helped shape electronic music. After his early career with Aphrodite’s Child, he developed a distinctive solo voice and composed film scores including Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner and 1492: Conquest of Paradise. Music from Blade Runner appears in Francesca Badalini’s medley on Shared Souls.
Album Notes Fondazione Cineteca Italiana Matteo Pavesi With three cinemas showing films of artistic and historical interest, an interactive museum that has become an important centre for film education, an extensive underground film archive accessible through augmented-reality applications, a restoration and post-production laboratory, and a library of rare books and periodicals, Fondazione Cineteca Italiana brings together many different aspects of cinema culture. Established in Milan in 1947 by the directors Luigi Comencini and Alberto Lattuada, the Cineteca has been a member of FIAF since 1948. At the time of this…
Matteo Pavesi
With three cinemas showing films of artistic and historical interest, an interactive museum that has become an important centre for film education, an extensive underground film archive accessible through augmented-reality applications, a restoration and post-production laboratory, and a library of rare books and periodicals, Fondazione Cineteca Italiana brings together many different aspects of cinema culture.
Established in Milan in 1947 by the directors Luigi Comencini and Alberto Lattuada, the Cineteca has been a member of FIAF since 1948. At the time of this recording, its activities were developed in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, Regione Lombardia, Città Metropolitana, Comune di Milano, Comune di Paderno Dugnano, Epson, ECFA, Europa Cinemas, the University of Milano-Bicocca, Fondazione Mondadori and AEM Milano.
The archive held some 35,000 international film titles dating back to 1895, including a collection of Italian animation. Its heritage also included approximately 300 antique cinema devices, 100,000 photographs, original screenplays, 17,000 books and periodicals, and 15,000 posters. In 2011 it created two interactive spaces: the MIC–Interactive Film Museum and the Augmented Reality Film Archive, integrating archival collections, film literacy, cross-media practice and audience engagement.
The Cineteca’s cinemas—Spazio Oberdan, Area Metropolis and the MIC Theatre—offered approximately 2,000 screenings a year, welcoming around 130,000 spectators, alongside a broad programme of educational activities.
Francesca Badalini
This recording grew out of a wish to retrace my “cine-musical” life, focusing on the path that has linked me to Cineteca Italiana since 1999. Track by track, memories and impressions of films, places and encounters gradually resurface. I believe there are few places today where the magic of cinema can still be experienced intact.
One is certainly Cineteca Italiana [02], with its archive, interactive museum and cinemas, where works from distant times and places can be seen again, far from the standardisation of the multiplex. The first people to welcome me there, in autumn 1999, were Gianni Comencini and Matteo Pavesi. Gianni [03] was then its director and one of its founding figures. I still remember the passion he brought to his work and his great kindness.
The first film I accompanied before an audience was De brug [14], Joris Ivens’s short documentary of 1928 about the structure and workings of Rotterdam’s lifting bridge: hardly the simplest debut! On screen was a bridge over a river; for me, it became a bridge between my classical training and the cinema-related musical experiences of the years ahead. This is how I would set it to music today.
The Cinemobile [05] is one of the Cineteca’s treasures: a van equipped with a projector and sound equipment which travelled around Italy from the 1930s to the 1960s, showing newsreels, documentaries and films on a screen mounted in front of it. Its travelling storytelling ended abruptly in 1964, when it was abandoned in a scrapyard on the outskirts of Rome. After many vicissitudes, Regione Lombardia purchased it and commissioned Storica to restore it. On 15 October 2016 it found a new home at the Cineteca’s Museo Interattivo del Cinema. It is fascinating to imagine travelling with the Cinemobile, taking cinema everywhere as it once did, on a poetic journey despite the bumps and occasional mishaps.
The more recent DVD series I Tesori del MIC, devoted to rediscovered and restored treasures of cinema history, brought me to a novel familiar to almost every Italian schoolchild: Alessandro Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi [06]. Mario Bonnard’s film of 1923 conveys its psychological and historical dimensions with depth and intensity. My work has not been limited to silent films: over the years I have also composed for sound cinema, including Il sogno di Federico [08, 09], a docufiction by the Italian director Paolo Lipari, produced by Radiotelevisione Svizzera Italiana.
In those eighteen years I missed only one concert. Six years before this recording, on the day Silvia was born, I was due to accompany the silent film I Mille. As a local newspaper put it, the screening was interrupted by a newborn’s cry. Silvia was eager to improvise even before she learned to play the piano. Mother and Daughter [11], which we play together at one piano, is a faithful transcription of one of her improvisations. I already know to whom I shall pass the baton!
Time passes quickly, crystallising into years and memories [12]. The passion remains, while the desire to experiment with new sounds and explore unfamiliar musical paths grows. The soundtrack for La madre e la morte [18] uses artificial timbres and electronic sound processing to accompany the dreamlike, visionary images of Arrigo Frusta’s compelling short film of 1911.
Nonsense Song [13] pays tribute to Charlie Chaplin’s genius as an actor, director and gifted musician. His performance in Modern Times made this song a classic and finally allowed audiences to hear his voice. I have always been curious about instruments’ less familiar timbres, so my version uses prepared piano and unusual playing techniques.
Sometimes I compose for modern instruments, even working with a rock band. With the help of two of its members, I arranged and combined music from two great films, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence and Blade Runner [16], in a medley for piano, electric guitar, electric bass and percussion. Moving between East and West, it is a tribute to the 1980s, the years of my musical and cinematic formation.
When a good film ends [21], we leave the cinema full of emotion, with a subtle vein of melancholy. Will we feel the same when we turn off the stereo after listening to this recording?
Antonio Zambrini
In 2002 my dear friend Francesca Gualandri asked me to play the piano at a screening of a silent film from 1924 starring her grandfather Carlo Gualandri. The film had just been restored and was ready to be shown at Cineteca Italiana. That was how I met Matteo Pavesi, Gianni and Luisa Comencini, Francesca Badalini and all the friends working at the Cineteca.
For every film I have accompanied since then, I have kept the approach of that first occasion: sitting at the piano, beginning with a chance note and improvising melodies, chords and silences—not necessarily jazz, classical music or any other style, but simply following the images on my monitor. After a performance, listeners have often asked whether the music was available as a score so that they could play it at home. This told me that my improvisations were communicating, and I have maintained that approach throughout these years, fortunate and honoured to work with Cineteca Italiana.
We play and improvise on pieces connected with cinema in different ways. Improvviso [17] relates particularly to my long association with the Cineteca, built around free live piano improvisation during silent-film screenings. Comencini [15] and Natale a Rimini [10] are my tributes to Gianni Comencini, associated with the Cineteca since its foundation in 1947, and to Federico Fellini.
Mimì [01] was composed by Paolino Dalla Porta for Wilma Labate’s film Domenica (2001). Paolino also arranged Pure Imagination [07] for our trio, a song by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley from Mel Stuart’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971).
Francesca Badalini: piano, electric guitar and electronics; Aurora Bisanti: violin; Lydia Colona: clarinet; Andrea Grumelli: electric bass; Francesca Lipari and Emiliana Parenzi Colombo: flutes; Davide Martinelli: percussion; Gianfranco Messina: violin and viola; Matteo Zurletti and Giulia Monti: cello; Fabrizio Rizzo: accordion; Silvia De Brasi: piano in Mother and Daughter. Antonio Zambrini: piano; Paolino Dalla Porta: double bass; Manhu Roche: drums.
The classical programme was recorded at Mouseville Studio, Milan, in April–May 2017; sound engineer: Francesca Badalini. The jazz programme was recorded at Orlando Music Studio, Milan, in December 2016; sound engineer: Stefano Spina. Cover image: a still from Luigi Comencini’s Il museo dei sogni (1949). Production, design and art direction: OMK–Da Vinci. Printed with the support of S.P.L.M.
Selected awards, reviews and interviews. Radio broadcasts and podcasts are listed separately below.
ColonneSonore.net
“questo album è una vera chicca”
A four-star review of the recording’s dialogue between classical film accompaniment and jazz, praising its musical variety, the performances and the imaginative arrangements.
Read the review ↗ - ColonneSonore.netEuterpe · Rivista EA
A philosophical essay discusses Shared Souls as an encounter between film music, reinterpretation and experimentation, alongside recordings by Paliaga and Plano and by Fabio Mina.
Explore the coverage ↗ - Euterpe · Rivista EA
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