A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Battle of Algiers, Sacco and Vanzetti, Cinema Paradiso, Malena, The Untouchables, The Mission, Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly... besides having been directed by masters of international cinema and having won several prestigious awards, these films have one major thing in common: the music of maestro Ennio Morricone. Celebrating his 85th birthday, Morricone has composed a staggering body of music, including scores for more than 450 films and over 100 pieces of concert music and has to his credit 27 Gold and 6 Platinum records.


Born in Rome on November 10, 1928, Ennio Morricone started his film-composing career in 1961 with Il Federale, directed by Luciano Salce, but his scores for Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns are what launched him to worldwide fame.


A list of the directors he has worked with includes Pier Paolo Pasolini, Oliver Stone, Pedro Almodovar, Bernardo Bertolucci, Brian De Palma, Roman Polanski, Quentin Tarantino and Giuseppe Tornatore. In 2007, Morricone received the honorary award from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences for his “magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music.” Through the years he has been nominated for five Academy Awards, inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for the soundtrack to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and won Grammy Awards for the soundtracks to Once Upon a Time in the West and The Untouchables. He also won Golden Globe awards for his scores for The Mission and 1900, the ASCAP Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award and the Career Achievement Award from the Film Music Society.


In January 2014 he received The Recording Academy’s Trustees Award in recognition of his notable contributions to recordings outside of performance. The beginning of 2014 has much more in store for the maestro. He will participate in rare performances in Los Angeles (March 20) and New York (March 23). Since 2001, Morricone has engaged in intense concert activity, and has conducted more than 100 concerts in Europe, Asia, the United States, and in Central and South America of his film music and concert works. Morricone will conduct an ensemble of 200 musicians and singers performing some of his landmark film music.


The Roma Sinfonietta Orchestra was founded in 1993 in collaboration with the University Tor Vergata of Rome. For more than a decade under Morricone’s direction, the ensemble has performed in some of the most important theaters of the world. This is his first time back in NYC since 2007 when he held concerts at Radio City Music Hall and at the UN.


On March 23, the concert will be held at the Barclays Center Cushman & Wakefield Theater in Brooklyn. Morricone will perform his first-ever Los Angeles concert on March 20th at the Nokia Theatre. The concerts are presented by Massimo Gallotta Productions, and the Los Angeles concert is co-presented by AEG.


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