Il tocco di Piero

What does "Il tocco di Piero" - that extra something, to borrow the words of Carella - actually consist of, the quality that allowed Umiliani to travel through half a century of Italian music history while remaining constantly at the cutting edge? The answer lies within the 112 minutes of Massimo Martella's eponymous documentary, produced and distributed by Luce Cinecittà. A passionate - and necessary - tribute to the Maestro, built almost entirely "in his absence": not because he passed away in 2001, but because there is a near-total lack of interviews and archival material documenting the career of this brilliant Florentine jazz musician, author of more than 150 film scores. Umiliani was a shy, reserved figure. He shunned even photographs, let alone interviews or celebratory TV specials. Add to that the fact that the old saying nemo propheta in patria is alive and well in this country, especially when it comes to the most innovative and unconventional figures, and it becomes clear why, in order to reconstruct Umiliani's life, it was first and foremost necessary to let his music speak for itself. And so his classic repertoire comes back to life, performed strictly live in true jazz spirit, entrusted to pianist Enrico Pieranunzi - a jazz musician and former arranger for Umiliani himself - who, together with a formidable group of young musicians, performs the jazz repertoire, while the more electronic and experimental compositions, such as the scores for genre films, are handled by Calibro 35, the most authoritative figures in the rediscovery of 1970s film music.

The choice of Martella, a director from Taranto previously devoted to the world of crime dramas, could have risked undermining the fluidity of the narrative, but ultimately it's precisely thanks to the verve of the musicians involved in "Il tocco di Piero" that Umiliani's music once again manages to captivate the viewer, joining the countless dots that separate its origins from our present day. Alongside the aforementioned Pieranunzi and Calibro 35, special mention should go to the two vocalists: a sublime Simona Severini, a refined chanteuse with a magnetic stage presence who deserves far more attention, and singer-songwriter Serena Altavilla, a renowned star of the indie scene, tied to bands like Mariposa and the same Calibro 35, as well as successful international features (like the delightful "Go" alongside Brazilian artist Barro). Their two velvety voices are the perfect vehicle for shaping Umiliani's sinuous lounge textures, while a passionate Carlotta Proietti is entrusted with the interpretation of "Valzer della Toppa", written by Umiliani in collaboration with Pasolini and now a classic of Roman song.

The other crucial insight of "Il tocco di Piero" is its use of Umiliani's artistic trajectory to trace the transformation of film music, musical taste and Italian society itself, across a timeline stretching from the immediate postwar era of the first jazz combos to the lounge revival embraced by bands and electronic producers in the 1990s. "As a result," Martella notes in his director's statement, "the settings, visual evocations and colours of the musical clips reference the eras and places where the original tracks were enjoyed: from the nightclubs of the 1950s to the Sanremo Festival, from dark cinema to the cinema born of the economic boom, from the arrival of beat and psychedelia around '68, to the strobe lights of 1980s discos."

Umiliani was both an attentive witness to and an architect of this thrilling journey towards Italian modernisation, positioning himself with his gentle, unmistakable "touch" always one step ahead of his time: among the first to import jazz in the postwar years, absorbing it from the Allied forces' bands, the first author of an Italian jazz film score (for Mario Monicelli's "I soliti ignoti"), then the (unwitting) creator of a worldwide earworm ("Mah-nà mah-nà", given in the film an amusing duet-courtship rendition by Massimo Wertmuller and Simona Severini), the composer of dozens of soundtracks for genre films of the 1960s and 70s and among the first to experiment with electronic music in Italy, even acquiring the first American machines (Arp 2600, Minimoog, etc.), the first "indie" composer (thanks to his choice to work with his own studio, the Sound Work Shop, with his own equipment and label, Omicron), among the quickest to grasp the evolution of film music, throwing himself into scoring with around a hundred library music records, still an inexhaustible source of samples for international rappers to this day, right up to the abrupt halt of his career due to a brain haemorrhage in the mid-1980s and the arduous recovery in the solitary retreat of Giannutri, in Tuscany. A path always lived in complete freedom, paying the price in terms of popularity and work opportunities, but certainly not in musical quality, considering that all the greatest Italian jazz musicians played for Umiliani, as well as Chet Baker, Helen Merrill and Gato Barbieri; and in the 1990s his work was even rediscovered in nightclubs by a very young audience.

Finally, there is the account of Piero's private life, through the testimonies of the Umiliani family (his wife Stefania and daughters Elisabetta and Alessandra, the latter having managed to become a singer for him), the memories of friends and collaborators such as a moving Edda Dall'Orso, Giovanni Tommaso, Gegè Munari, Silvano Chimenti, and contributions from music and film historians such as Vincenzo Mollica, Dario Salvatori, Pierpaolo De Sanctis and Luca Sapio. Here one is alternately moved (with actual chills over the Maestro's last words on his deathbed) and entertained, for example by the recollection of the golden age of erotic cinema, which can be summed up in a remark from the wife of director Luigi Scattini, with whom Umiliani shared several projects in the '70s, from the cult "Svezia inferno e paradiso" to the equally epic "La ragazza dalla pelle di luna": "When you see Zeudi Araya running naked in front of you on the shore with those breasts as still as marble, you either accept it or you shoot yourself!"

"Jazz is rhythm, because it comes from Africa. It's part of our life," Piero Umiliani used to say. Although, as is well known, "women hated jazz and nobody knows why", so even within his own family he struggled to make his scores understood. "Il tocco di Piero" gives back to us that syncopated, improvised flow, through a sincere tribute which, despite the difficulty of historical and musical reconstruction, succeeds in bringing out the disruptive force of a visionary artistic creativity and a kind, ironic personality, one who took his work as seriously as he took himself lightly. Which, deep down, is how we should all be.

Now, however, it's time to hand things over to the director of "Il tocco di Piero", Massimo Martella, whom we asked a few questions about his documentary, which after screenings in some cities and at the Turin Film Festival, should hopefully find its way onto some television platform.

Martella, how did the idea for this documentary come about?

I grew up with rock music: in the years when my friends called themselves Marxist-Leninists, I called myself "Dylanian" - I'd basically built my political outlook on the lyrics of Bob Dylan. Then all my early experiences in the world of media happened in independent radio. So I'd long aspired to make a music documentary. Umiliani, in particular, is an artist I'd wanted to tell the story of for several years. Researching him, I also realised that through his musical journey and all the genres he wandered through, you could also tell the story of the evolution of Italians' musical taste. Then, through other channels, I got to know his daughter Elisabetta, who invited me in 2006 to see a Pieranunzi concert performing her father's music. And I was stunned to discover that I already knew half the pieces without knowing they were his. I also realised the huge musical range Umiliani had covered over his career. So we started daydreaming about the idea for this documentary, which then became reality many years later, when I left the world of fiction to dedicate myself to documentaries, beginning a very positive relationship with Istituto Luce, which gave me the chance to make "Il tocco di Piero".

How were the musicians chosen to perform Umiliani's pieces selected? Pieranunzi was almost an obvious choice, but the two vocalists, Simona Severini and Serena Altavilla, were a great instinct...

It was a choice made by the musicians: I gave them carte blanche. After choosing the tracks together, I asked Pieranunzi if he had a singer in mind to perform them, and he told me, "If you trust me, I'll bring her to you." And he showed up with Simona, who was an incredible discovery: I also really love her stage presence, she's a magnetic figure who very easily takes us back to those atmospheres. And it went the same way with Serena: she was recommended by Calibro 35, and when I heard her sing, we decided together on this gamble of doing "La ragazza dalla pelle di luna" with no musical accompaniment. I told Serena: "If you come to Rome to do this, I'll introduce you to Edda Dell'Orso." And she completely lost her mind... it was a truly special meeting.

Edda Dell'Orso's testimony is among the most moving.

Oh yes, but Edda really deserves a documentary all to herself. Though I don't know if she'd agree, since she's a person of unbearable modesty! She doesn't think she did anything special, she always tends to play down her abilities, which were in fact exactly the vocal timbre needed for those atmospheres. You'd never expect that a singer who defined an era in musical taste (not just in Italy, given that she has fans all over the world) lives in Rome in a two-room flat on a welfare pension and little else. She never fought like the vocalist on "The Great Gig In The Sky" (Clare Torry, ed.), who eventually managed to get paid royalties on that Pink Floyd track; Edda, on the other hand, despite having contributed so much to the success of those themes, never received a penny.

Now let's talk a bit about Piero. What emerges is the portrait of a "joker", but also of a curious, restless man, free of prejudice, who thanks to this mindset always managed to stay ahead of his time. Let me sum it up quickly: first Italian to make jazz film scores ("I soliti ignoti"), unwitting forerunner of lounge, first "indie" composer with his Sound Work Shop, among the first to experiment with the new electronic keyboards, skilled at reinventing himself through library music, a source of samples even for today's rappers...

Yes, he was always an innovator. He also had his own label, Omicron, through which he released his soundtracks. There are 40-50 musical themes in the film, between original performed pieces and background ones, and I paid very little in rights, because it's all owned by the Umiliani family! No one managed things that way back then. But he paid a price for it too, because he ended up isolated from the industry and stopped getting calls. Either way, on his own he managed to record a hundred library music albums: he's the second most sampled Italian musician in the world after Ennio Morricone. And almost exclusively by contemporary rappers and artists. In the film, for instance, there's young singer-songwriter Joan Thiele, who is working on a project sampling his music.

What also emerges is the portrait of a very humble and approachable artist, unlike many of his colleagues.

Exactly. I had to cut a lot of contributions for time reasons, but there were, for instance, stories from musicians recalling how, during breaks, Umiliani would always go with them to grab a porchetta sandwich. Can you imagine Morricone in a situation like that? (we laugh). And he was also the first to be surprised by his success with younger generations. When he was invited to play the concert at the Brancaleone, he was incredulous, and told his daughters: "Suddenly, playing for those kids, I understood that I had composed something different from what I thought I had made." He realized his pieces had almost transformed over time.

Then again, (almost) everything was already there in "Svezia inferno e paradiso" from 1968. Is that his real magnum opus for you too?

Yes, for me too it's one of his peaks. And it's no coincidence that it came out in the very year he went independent. As soon as he was free to make his own music, he wrote his finest work, from 1968 to 1972.

It was also a different era for cinema, with the boom of genre films, from poliziotteschi to westerns, from erotica to horror, by way of B-movie sci-fi, and many excellent Italian composers contributed to that wave too. Did Umiliani perhaps pay a price for having taken part in so many productions considered "B-movies" at the time?

It's a curious story, really — excellent composers often found themselves attached to productions deemed second-rate, even though Piero, for instance, actually started out working on a documentary by the Taviani brothers, even before "I soliti ignoti" with Monicelli. But in those years an enormous amount of films were being made, and it was a huge opportunity for our composers. Of course, for Morricone, for example, tying himself to a director like Sergio Leone was a considerable advantage (and vice versa, obviously). Umiliani wasn't so lucky, because Monicelli, for instance, wanted different musicians for each of his films depending on the type of project, so he didn't want to tie himself to him. Piero got a bit greedy once success arrived, as he himself admitted. He didn't always make the right choices: once he got into the genre-film circuit, he was writing as many as 15 soundtracks a year. So he didn't really concern himself much with the quality of the films. I don't think he ever said no to a project — perhaps if he had, choosing instead to attach himself to some major director, that would have elevated his body of work even further.

Perhaps that's also why Umiliani was later reassessed, because younger generations became more open to genre cinema, partly in the wake of films by Quentin Tarantino and the like.

Absolutely, and critical approaches have changed too. Back then criticism was Marxist in outlook, apart from Gian Luigi Rondi and a couple of others, and so it was hostile to that kind of cinema, considering it more than just commercial — almost harmful. In my own small way, I ran into a bit of trouble too...

What kind?

To bring that music back to life I went digging through some footage from films of the era, especially Scattini's, partly because the rights were more affordable. But the fact that I used some nude scenes, for instance, bothered a few people.

I can't believe it! How can anyone be so prudish as not to accept the beauty of those scenes? Like the one with the naked Swedish women in the snow after the sauna, or Zeudy Araya running along the shoreline...

Cult scenes, yes. Luckily, in the film Scattini's wife is there to defuse the whole thing with some humor about it. And Gegè Munari's account is also amusing — he says that while they were playing the music for the sexy scenes, every now and then their eyes would drift to the actresses passing in front of them: it was inevitable!

Why did you choose to include so much live music in the film?

It was a forced choice. I didn't have any good-quality interviews with Piero — after all, he never let himself be filmed: there isn't even a photo of him playing in the studio! On top of that, there were rights issues for some film scenes (like "I soliti ignoti" and "Audace colpo..."). So in the end I decided to let his music speak for itself. And naturally it had to be played live, because that way it added value instead of doing a disservice to a jazz musician by resorting to playback.

Through Umiliani's career you can also sense the atmosphere of a different Italy, the one that, from the economic boom through the '70s and '80s, seemed devoted to exploration, to curiosity about what was coming from abroad, to the future... And today?

Today I struggle to keep up with the music of recent years. Apparently we can listen to everything, but in reality that's not quite true. I used to listen to the radio shows of people like Giaccio, Massarini, Arbore and company. Those were things that reached you when there was radio and little else. When Mister Fantasy landed on TV it was an event, because certain music was arriving on television in a new, modern way. Then there was the "physical" relationship with the object itself, vinyl first and foremost, but CDs too. Today we can watch and listen to anything, anywhere, but radio stations, for instance, nearly all play the same stuff — I have to go looking for the best things on OndaRock (we laugh). But not everyone does that, there's so much homogenization, it's hard to search through this indistinct, continuous flow — I think that's the main difficulty.

Last question: how did "Il tocco di Piero" do in the cinemas where it was released? And will we get to see it on TV too?

We released it through local screenings: in Rome it did quite well, we had more than ten days of screenings at the Farnese, then we opened in other places, but not in Florence, Piero's hometown, where we still haven't managed to find an available cinema — we're hoping to make it happen in September. I try to always be there to introduce it to the audience. And then I'm hoping we can place it with a TV platform, even though it's a difficult time even for specialized channels like Sky Arte, which would have been perfect for it. But we'll keep trying.

Technical details

Title: Il tocco di Piero

Genre: Documentary

Year: 2022

Director: Massimo Martella

Country: Italy

Running time: 112 minutes

Distribution: Luce Cinecittà

Screenplay: Massimo Martella

Cinematography: Paolo Ferrari

Editing: Angelo Musciagna

Music: Piero Umiliani

Production: Luce Cinecittà

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