Piovani conducts Piovani

Nicola Piovani is a pianist, conductor, composer. Among the masters who initiated him to composition, the Greek Manos Hadjidakis. A large part of Nicola Piovani’s activity is dedicated to cinema and theatre, between which he divides himself with passion. His first soundtrack dates back to 1968 for the newsreels on the student movement of the Faculty of Philosophy he attended, created by a university collective under the guidance of Silvano Agosti. The debut in a feature film took place the following year, with N. P. The secret of Silvano Agosti. After N.P. he begins a career that leads him to write music for the major Italian directors: Marco Bellocchio, Mario Monicelli, the Taviani brothers, Nanni Moretti, Nanni Loy, Giuseppe Tornatore, Roberto Benigni and Federico Fellini, who turned to the musician for his last three films. Foreign directors include Ben Von Verbong, Pál Gábor, Dusan Makavejev, Bigas Luna, Jos Stelling, John Irvin, Sergej Bodrov, Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Philippe Lioret, Luis Sepulveda, Danièle Thompson, Xavier Durringer. With the soundtrack of La vita è bella by Roberto Benigni, he wins the Oscar award.

Over the years he has also received many awards. Also active as a songwriter, in the 1970s he composed with Fabrizio De André the albums Non al denaro, non all’amore né al cielo e Storia di un impiegato. In 1995 he wrote three songs for Roberto Benigni’s theater tour, including the successful Quanto t’ho amato. From the beginning, Piovani combined his work in cinema with theater, writing incidental music for productions by Carlo Cecchi, Luca De Filippo, Maurizio Scaparro and Vittorio Gassman. In 1989, with Luigi Magni and Pietro Garinei, he created the musical comedy The Seven Kings of Rome for the Sistina Theater.

At the end of the eighties began the artistic partnership with Vincenzo Cerami. Together with the actor Lello Arena, they founded the Compagnia della Luna, with the intention of giving life to a new genre in which music and words interact on an expressive level. He was appointed Chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture.

Since 2021 he has been resident artist of the Fondazione Musica per Roma at the Auditorium Parco della Musica with the task of proposing original musical theater projects.

Thodoris Voutsikakis is considered to be the most prominent singer of his generation, one of the most promising young performers of Greek music. Every performance he delivers, receives overwhelming comments by the public and praising reviews by the critics.

The remarkable achievements at his career, important collaborations with distinguished artists and enviable invitations by the most emblematic organizations and theatres of Greece, in such a short period, prove that he has come to this very competitive field of art, music, in order to stay for many years in it and to draw his own path.

His Greek origins, his family’s multi-cultural background, his love for the movies and the many-faceted studies on singing, musical theater but also…Law, has shaped his artistic vision. Motivated by the versatile Mediterranean mosaic he is surrounded by, Thodoris Voutsikakis never stops evolving his musical identity.