Bruno Nicolai

Born: May 20th, 1926 at Rome, Italy.
Death: August 16th, 1991 at Rome, Italy.
Bruno Nicolai was born in Italy in 1926, and the first film he scored was 1963's "Head of the Family". Bruno's big break came in 1965, when he was the musical supervisor for the Sergio Leone film, "A Few Dollars More". In 1966 he reprised this role for "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly". Bruno worked along side composing master Ennio Morricone, learning much from him.
Bruno Nicolai studied piano, organ and composition at the Conservatory Of Santa Cecilia. His teacher for piano was Aldo Mantia, and for composition was Goffredo Petrassi. While at the Conservatory he met Ennio Morricone who also was studying with Petrassi. A friendship began that would last many years.
He has composed for theatre, TV and movies. Between scoring movies he also conducted scores by Carlo Rustichelli, Luis E. Bacalov and Nino Rota. He conducted many of Morricone's scores, and played the organ on some of them and also co-scored some with him. Many of his scores have and are still being released on his Edi-Pan label.
In 1975 Bruno was the musical director for Tinto Brass' movie, "Saloon Kitty", and this is here the two got to know each other.
About 1977 Bruno was approaching by the Caligula Production (probably through Tinto Brass) team to write original music for the movie. As well, Bruno picked out the Classical music that was featured through-out the movie, he must have been a big fan of Aram Il'Ych Khachaturian (1903-1978) and Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953), who were both great Soviet Union composers.
Bruno's last film was 1987's "Buckeye and Blue", which he wrote the score.
Bruno died in 1991 in Italy.