Giorgio Moroder one of the most innovative artists ever in the field of electronic music and pioneer in Italy and in the world of a genre that made history, disco music, turns 80 tomorrow.
Moroder is among the most brilliant and influential composers, record producers and DJs of the contemporary scene where through his style he is capable of changing the way of producing and listening to music in the mid-70s.
He is famous above all for the use of the synthesizer, the numerous hits and the soundtracks which allowed him to win three Academy Awards.
Born in Ladin territory, in Ortisei, a municipality in the autonomous province of Bolzano in Trentino-Alto Adige, on April 26, 1940, in a middle-class family, Giovanni Giorgio Moroder began his experience in the world of music by learning to play the guitar as a teenager and then touring Europe. “I was 15 when I heard a piece called ‘Diana’. I liked it so much that I started playing the guitar and from that day on I became a musician because of Paul Anka,” said Moroder himself.
He settled in Berlin where he started working as a sound engineer and producer of some ‘schlager’ hits (popular music genre widespread in Central Europe), then in 1968 he started his activity as a light music singer recording several 45 rpm. In the 70s he moved to Monaco and important collaborations began for Moroder, such as that with the English producer and lyricist Pete Bellotte, who gave life to the album ‘Son of My Father’, in 1972.
Thus began an extraordinary artistic partnership with the singer and the real starting point of Moroder’s career, committed to revolutionizing the stylistic figures of popular music.
“We wanted to make an album with future sounds. And I thought: the only way would be to use the synthesizer, the bass, the drums, the Hi-hat, the snare. Then Donna Summer came and sang,” explained Moroder . Technology and music are the two passions that the composer has cultivated over the years, creating his own unique genre. Always attentive to new sounds, Moroder had had something to do with experimentation at the beginning of his career. it is from ‘Son of My Father’ that uses the synthesizer.
The first track entirely to the synthesizer is instead ‘I Feel Love’ from 1977 by Donna Summer, another mix of sensuality and technological sounds, still today considered among the most influential ever for the development of disco music. “I heard the sound of the future,” Brian Eno exclaimed to David Bowie in the Hansa Tonstudio recording studio in Berlin. Still in 1977 Moroder was the producer of electronic record hits for artists such as Roberta Kelly, The Three Degrees, the Sparks, and released one of his best known singles: ‘From Here to Eternity’.
