Thank you for the music - and the lessons.

I’ve been lucky enough that my work life so far has had more than its share of unforgettable moments. Today I am reminded of the most unforgettable one, spent in the company of movie soundtrack genius, Maestro Ennio Morricone, whose passing was the sad news I woke up to this morning.

No pain, no gain : I owe those moments, and that collaboration with a bona fide genius of composition and orchestration, to my painfully inevitable decision, 7 years ago, to leave my friends and colleagues at P&G, and become a slasher. Not in the serial killer meaning of “slasher”, mind you. A slasher in the sense of being, professionally, a this ? slash ? that. In my particular case, a strategist ? / ? musician.

I left P&G after 18 (mostly very happy and fulfilling) years, because my lifelong, growing desire to make music far outweighed the time and energy I had left for it at the end of a fairly intense work day or week. I loved my job as a brand building expert, and I’ve continued to do that job as a freelancer for just over a third of my time on average since I left. But the other two thirds are mostly spent in the music world; in particular in my role as the founder of SoundAdvice, a company that creates music and sonic properties for brands and ads : a nice and effective way of bridging marketing expertise with music creation and production chops, by creating sounds that serve a brand’s equity and message, after years of teaching myself (and a few folks at P&G) how the hell that works. SoundAdvice started as a side project to everything else, before quickly snowballing into a full-fledged, hard-working outfit (we're here : www.soundadvice.ch).

Mostly, I love what the life change in question has done for me. Although, on the downside, my LinkedIn profile has become incomprehensible to the casual visitor (feedback from clients on the music front fights for attention with feedback on the consulting front, and the whole thing tends to look like an explosion in a CV shop).

But on the upside – I get to live two incredibly, equally fulfilling professional lives at once (three, if you count being in a rock band that’s just about to release its first album – but that doesn’t make it to LinkedIn). AND, I got to meet, and work, with Maestro Morricone, in his apartment in Rome; to enjoy his and his lovely wife’s heartwarming sense of hospitality; to discuss our shared love and admiration for Miles Davis (I gave him a rare vinyl record by the man on the day of my second visit) (yes, there were TWO visits); and to witness a genius at work, sitting at his piano and instantly coming up with the core of his musical idea for the project we had come to brief him about, in less than a minute.

The meeting happened after I got a call from fellow P&G alumni Alessandra Fontana of MSC Cruises, NOT (initially) in my role as a branded music maker, but as a brand building consultant. Ale and her agency team, lead by the ever brilliant Daniele Cobianchi, were struggling to qualify a piece of film which they did love. After three unsuccessful rounds of testing, they called me to see if I could find the time to drop by, take a look, and help them get over whatever executional issues were keeping their beautiful idea and footage from working with test panel consumers as well as they hoped (For the record, I initially turned the job down on account of being swamped with work, but Ale insisted, and I am forever grateful she did).

Turns out there were only, in my view, three executional distractions standing in the way of a great test score for what was a beautifully shot film with a great idea at its core : a voice over which felt slightly counter intuitive to the visuals; a less-than-spectacular end benefit visual; and most importantly, “a soundtrack that kills your drama rather than support it.” This is when the conversation morphed into a SoundAdvice job. The film was constructed to open with an intriguing macro vision shot of a drop of water falling upon a cotton plant. From plant to flower, flower to thread, thread to sheet, sheet to bed, bed to bedroom and bedroom to cruise ship, it then opened progressively to climax on a highly emotional widescreen view of a luxury cruise ship. Instead of supporting the story’s cinematic, climactic build-up from close-up intrigue to luxurious pay-off, the music played more or less flat throughout with a comedic tone which I felt detracted from the intended emotional response. Daniele and the team bought the point, we wrote the basis of a new music brief together, and that was it.

For a week.

A week later Alessandra called.

“So. We have a problem.”

-Yeah ?”

-Well, our company’s president is childhood friends with Maestro Ennio Morricone.

-OK. I don’t see how that’s a problem, but OK.

-Well he’s had dinner with him and said, ‘We have this guy (you) who says that the reason why our new film doesn’t test well is the music, but everything else is great.’

-OK.

-And so Maestro Morricone has offered to compose the music.

-OK. Again I REALLY don’t see how that’s a problem, apart from – it’s not going to be cheap. But at least you know it’ll sound fabulous.

-Well, Daniele and I think it would be really good if you two could go and brief Maestro Morricone on the music.

-…. (starts to shake uncontrollably)

-And today is Friday, and you guys would need to go on Monday…

-……… (shaking worsens)

-And I know it’s short notice, and you would have to go to Rome and meet him at his place…

-(nervous manic cough)

-I know, right ? It IS short notice, I am sorry to ask…

-Are you JOKING ? Of course I’ll go. I’ll crawl there if I have to.”

I didn’t have to crawl, but I would have. Like anyone who has any interest in the notion of creating melody or designing sound in the service of images, I have learnt most of what I know picking apart the work of a few geniuses from the world of film soundtracks : in my particular case, the works of John Williams, John Barry, and last but not least, and in fact first, Ennio Morricone. Anyone who wants to understand about the power of how sound can evoke and strengthen a visual universe only need close their eyes and hum the main theme from “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” – the shimmering guitars will bring up images of a rocky horizon blurred by blistering heat, the whistling and howling will evoke shadows of lone coyotes calling across the desert, and the wordless gang vocals will draw up the distant silhouettes of outlaws riding in wild packs towards impossible close-ups and inevitable face offs. Each note in Ennio Morricone’s soundtracks tells a story better than words could. One of the reasons why the best films he’s ever scored (including his own, and my, favorite among his works, "The Mission") are scarce on dialogue : with music of that calibre, “words are very unnecessary.”

Daniele and I did meet at the door of the Maestro’s nineteenth century apartment building in Rome – and went up to be greeted by the man himself, all understated hospitality and elegantly old school manners. His enthusiasm for the ad he was supposed to score was only matched by his lovely wife’s (“oooh, you young men work in advertising ? That must be interesting. Can I get you an espresso ?” Cue 80-something Mrs Morricone and her lovely espressos on a cute little tray – and much self-pinching from Daniele and myself). After about half an hour of a conversation that felt more like chatting than “briefing”, I couldn’t help but ask the question : “So, Maestro – do you have an idea already of how you want to approach this ?” “Eh - Certo.” And up the man goes to his beloved piano, sits down, carefully folds the full-length piece of crochet covering the keyboard onto his knees, and proceeds to improvise the whole thing from eerie start to glorious finish, while Daniele and I stand in absolute awe, every little hair upon our arms standing up like an antenna to pick up the vibrations of pure unadulterated genius in the air. When we were called back to meet again with the maestro three days later in the same place, the melody we picked - out of the three that he had in fact composed, and called us back to choose from - was the closest to the one he had improvised for us only minutes after hearing the brief. And needless to say, the orchestrated score sheets for each of the 52 musicians who ended up performing it were already written. By his hand.

A genius AND a craftsman. A legend AND a great host. 88 years old at the time, and still as passionate about music as he ever was - that gift of a rare Miles Davis record actually brought a tear to his eye. Every second of those meetings was a lesson in both musicianship and humanity. Which, in my mind, have a lot in common. Not to mention, an incredible birthday gift : our first meeting happened the day after I turned 43 – which is how I found the courage to ask for a picture together, which the Maestro gladly agreed to : “oooh, you’re a Scorpio like me ! Of course I’ll take a picture, what a happy coincidence !” (I am, in fact, a Sagittarius. I didn’t say a word. I really don’t care, and I DID want that picture). 

It’s not everyday you get to meet a legend. It’s not everyday that you don’t wish you hadn’t. Today I wish there had been a third time, and more : I learnt even more in that couple of hours than I did picking apart the man’s music. What a privilege – and how grateful I still am to this day. Riposa in pace, Maestro. My deepest condolences to your lovely wife and family. And thank you, so much, for everything.