Armando Sciascia

Violinist, arranger, conductor and composer Armando Alberto Sciascia (1920-2017) was one of the pioneers of Italian film and library music, as well as the founder and president of Milan-based record label Vedette Records.

After receiving a diploma in violin, composition and conducting from the Conservatory of Pesaro, in 1939 he moved to Milan, where he joined the orchestras of Milan’s Teatro Nuovo, Pomeriggi Musicali and RAI (the latter as first violin), before forming the Armando Sciascia Ensemble, which toured extensively across Europe. In the meantime, he composed and recorded instrumental music for record labels Fonit Cetra and Philips Records, besides providing arrangements and orchestrations for other artists.

In the early ‘60s he scored several genre films, including horrors like Metempsyco (Tomb of Torture, 1963), noirs like L’uomo che bruciò il suo cadavere (1964), westerns like Per un dollaro a Tucson si muore (1966) and, most importantly, a series of mondo movies, such as Renzo Russo’s Mondo caldo di notte (Hot World at Night, 1962), Sexy (1962), Per una valigia piena di donne (The Kinky Darlings, 1964) and Europa: operazione strip-tease (1964). The quality of Sciascia’s soundtracks is far above that of the films they were written for, thanks to sleazy jazz arrangements that convey a sense of intrigue, passion and danger through a brilliant use of percussion, sultry horns, and minor key chord changes.

In 1962 he founded the record label Vedette, which operated until 1986, as well as the music publisher Edizioni Musicali Eliseo, which is still active today. Vedette’s catalogue, which includes several sub-labels, ranges from Italian beat pop (Equipe 84, Pooh) to folk, and from American rock (Vedette was the first label in Italy to release music by The Doors) to easy listening and library music. Sciascia was a prolific library composer, writing and recording over thirty albums for Vedette’s “Musiche per sonorizzazioni e programmi” series. Since 1970 he also contributed to the genre as a forward-thinking producer, launching the “Phase 6 Super Stereo” series, which featured soundtrack themes and easy listening pieces recorded using then-innovative technologies.

Today, the Vedette/Eliseo catalogue includes major Italian library composers like Paolo Renosto aka Lesiman, Bruno Battisti D’Amario and Lee Selmoco; artists who worked in funk, pop and disco, such as Miro and Celso Valli’s band Azoto; and members of RAI’s jazz orchestra who also worked in library music, like Oscar Valdambrini, Al Korvin and Attilio Donadio.