Angelo Branduardi -

Angelo Branduardi (born Feb. 12, 1950) is an Italian singer/songwriter who emerged with two albums in 1974/75 on RCA Italiana, followed by six albums through 1981 on Polydor. Branduardi’s best-known songs include “Alla fiera dell’est,” “La pulce d’acqua,” “Cogli la prima mela,” and “Confessioni di un malandrino.” His soundtrack for the 1983 Italian historical comedy-drama State buoni se potete won the David di Donatello award for best score.

Background

Angelo Branduardi was born Feb. 12, 1950, in Cuggiono, Lombardy, Italy. His family moved to Genoa three months later when his father found employment in the port city. The elder Branduardi, a Verdi enthusiast with no instrumental training, redirected his son’s early piano interest toward violin lessons with teacher and conductor Augusto Silvestri. Branduardi studied with Silvestri and completed a violin diploma at the Conservatorio Niccolò Paganini, where he also appeared as a soloist with the conservatory orchestra.

The family returned to Milan when Branduardi was fifteen; he enrolled at the Istituto Tecnico per il Turismo to study foreign languages. Poet Franco Fortini taught him there for three or four years and extended the classes through informal meetings with a small student group. Branduardi then attended philosophy courses at the University of Milan, where he completed two examinations and set literary texts to music. At sixteen, he wrote music for the Dante Alighieri sonnet “Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare”; a setting of the Sergei Yesenin poem “Confessioni di un malandrino” followed among his early compositions.

Branduardi also took up guitar in Milan and joined a local circle that included Maurizio Fabrizio, Carmelo and Michelangelo La Bionda, and bassist Gigi Cappellotto. Fabrizio helped him develop guitar technique, while Branduardi found studio jobs on recordings by other musicians. He met Luisa Zappa, his subsequent co-lyricist and spouse. In 1971, an acquaintance introduced Branduardi to RCA producer Riccardo Michelini, who brought him to Rome for a company audition and contract. RCA authorized an album in 1972, but rejected the finished set and withheld the project from release.

Branduardi then contacted British arranger Paul Buckmaster by letter and sent him a cassette of new material. Buckmaster came to Rome in 1973 to produce and arrange a new Branduardi album at the RCA Italiana studios.

Discography: