Biography
Antonio Savona was born at Palermo, Italy. His artistic career had a very early start. In 1926, aged 6, he began studying music. Two years later he joined a choir and at the age of 10 he debuted in a radio broadcast playing a piece on a piano during a children's program.
After high-school, Savona enrolled at the Saint Cecilia's Conservatory in Rome to study piano.
In 1941 he replaced Iacopo Jacomelli in a vocal quartet called Quartetto Egie. The group changed name to Quartetto Ritmo at first, then to Quartetto Cetra one year later.
On 19 August 1944 Virgilio Savona married the singer Lucia Mannucci, who later joined Quartetto Cetra to replace Enrico De Angelis who left the group in 1947.
Besides singing, Savona was the group's composer and arranger. He wrote the music while Tata Giacobetti, also a member of the quartet, wrote the lyrics. They worked together for four decades and produced hundreds of songs which made up Quartetto Cetra's vast repertoire.
Savona also composed music and wrote scripts for radio and TV programs, stage shows and movies. During 1970s he was quite active as pianist, orchestra conductor, arranger and producer. He also made extensive research on folk songs. In 1971 he writes Angela, a song for Angela Davis, afroamerican communist leader, innocent in prison at this time. In 70s he published also other controversial songs, as Il testamento del parroco Meslier ("The Testament of Parson Meslier"), a violent attack to power and religion, based on the Testament of the priest and illuminist atheist philosopher Jean Meslier.
In 1991 he wrote an Popup Book about Quartetto Cetra, published by Sperling & Kupfer in the Supersound collection.
He died in 2009 from complications of the Parkinson's disease.
|
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Savona |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | 1 January 1920 |
| Place of birth | |
| Date of death | 27 August 2009 |
| Place of death | |
Read more about this topic: Virgilio Savona
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)