IT WAS like a scene straight out of a western. Five guys were sitting around a table one night playing cards and drinking whiskey. They wanted to hear some music that would capture the mood. They went through all the CDs they had lying around, but only one suited.
That CD was a collection of music the celebrated Italian composer Ennio Morricone had written for the spaghetti westerns of film-maker Sergio Leone. They guys playing cards happened to be musicians and performers and the combined effect of the setting and the music gave spark to a great idea.
This is how The Spaghetti Western Orchestra was born. Since then the Australian group have wowed audiences in their native land as well Britain and the Continent with their stunning re-creations of the music from the iconic films A Fistful of Dollars (1964 ), For a Few Dollars More (1965 ), The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966 ), and Once Upon A Time In The West (1968 ).
This month sees The Spaghetti Western Orchestra - Boris Conley, Jess Ciampa, Graeme Leak, Shannon Birchall, Patrick Cronin, along with director and designer Denis Blais - undertake their first tour of Ireland, which includes a ‘Róisín Dubh presents...’ show at The Black Box Theatre on Friday February 24 at 7pm.
He not only plays.
He can shoot too
So what can we expect to see and hear on the night? For their show the orchestra will use more than 100 items, including blowing on bottles, crushing cornflakes, ‘playing’ coathangers, fruit, squeaky toys, rubber gloves, bicycle pumps, as well as traditional musical instruments, in order to recreate not only every note of Ennio Morricone’s legendary music, but also every punch up, gunshot, and jangling spur from the films.
Patrick Cronin is ‘The Storyteller’ for the show and he explains his role during our Monday morning interview.
“Whistling and revving up the audience,” he tells me. “I do a bit of talking but not too much as we let the sound effects talk for themselves. My role is to get the audience involved and get them to help us re-create a sound or a bar scene or birds whistling, and we do a sing-along at the end.”
The concert will open with ‘The Man With The Harmonica’ from Once Upon A Time In The West, one of Patrick’s favourite pieces of music.
“The music is used in the scene where the character who plays Charles Bronson’s brother is being hanged,” says Patrick, “and while he’s hanging they get another man to stand beneath him and play harmonica and the sound he makes while the man hangs is haunting and beautiful.
“Another piece we play is a medley of music from For A Few Dollars More through to My Name Is Nobody. I particularly enjoy playing that, as it has a bit of everything. It changes all the time. Our percussionist has to play all kinds of drums and timpanis on it. I have to play a Jew’s harp, trumpet, percussion, and whistle.
“We’re all rushing from instrument to instrument and that’s part of the enjoyment for us. Morricone wrote these pieces for 60 to 80 piece orchestra and choir and we hope part of the enjoyment for the audience is seeing the five of us trying to create these sounds.”
The orchestra members all hail from Melbourne and its surrounding region and each member boasts a CV with extensive experience in music, theatre, performance, and comedy. Patrick himself was steeped in music from a young age.
“My father was an amateur musician who played piano,” he says. “I grew up listening to the jazz, swing, and polka, anything you could dance to really, from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s that my dad would have played with dance bands in the village halls where I grew up.
“Later I started playing in brass bands and community bands and then got into comedy at university and spent most of my years there doing that. From there my interests broadened out into producing events at festivals and keeping up my own performance in swing and Latin bands.”
Eventually Patrick’s path crossed with that of the other members and they decided to form a cabaret act that would allow them to play to their strengths in music, comedy, and theatre. Then in 2007 came the aforementioned nocturnal card game which sparked the idea of performing music from the spaghetti westerns - a derogatory term invented by American film critics for Italian made westerns.
“We wanted to create something that was not just us slavishly copying the music but that added something, and put in a dash of comedy, and theatre,” says Patrick.
It is also fair to say that had it not been for someone putting on the Ennio Morricone CD that night, Patrick might not have become the spaghetti western fan he is now.
“I would have seen the odd one when I was younger but I wasn’t really taken with them,” he admits, “but after that card game and hearing the music, led to delving deeper into the music and researching the films, and now I’m a spaghetti western addict.
“For A Few Dollars More is my favourite. It was the first collaboration between Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone. They found out more about film making as they went on, but I like the art element to it and that they did it on a shoe string budget.”
Strange...how you manage to always be in the right place
at the right time
The group’s first show as The Spaghetti Western Orchestra was at the Montreal Jazz Festival and since then they have never looked back. Their performances, in the fullest sense of the word, have met with successful shows across Australia, Britain, and the Continent. Typical reviews include: “A moving, cheeky and hilarious homage to the genius of Morricone” (Le Parisien ); “Musicianship and arrangements of the highest order,” (The List ); “An inspired show,” (The Scotsman ).
However the greatest praise has come from those musicians who performed the music of the films, and indeed from composer/conductor Ennio Morricone himself.
“Ennio Morricone has seen a DVD of us and word has it that he’s OK with the performances but he hates the name,” says Patrick. “To him, spaghetti western is derogatory. It was a term of abuse invented by American critics to try and undermine what film-makers were doing in Italy.
“I understand that but the way we use it is in the positive/retro sense. Spaghetti western has become an iconic term and when people see it now they know what it means and it’s been influential on other film-makers like Quentin Tarantino in Kill Bill.
“We’ve also played with a couple of the musicians who worked with Morricone on the film soundtracks. One of them was Maurizio Graf who was one of the singers on Return Of Ringo and Ringo Rides Again, there was a whole series of Ringo films. He sang the song ‘Angel Face’ and if you type his name and ‘Angel Face’ into YouTube you’ll see a clip of him singing it. He sounds like a young Johnny Cash.
“He approached us when we were playing Italy and asked if he could come to the show and we said ‘We’d love for you to come and sing with us’ and we brought him on during an encore and he sang ‘Angel Face’. Everyone knows him in Italy, but they hadn’t seen him in years. There were flowers being thrown on the stage, people were crying. He completely upstaged us!”
Tickets are available from the Róisín Dubh (www.roisindubh.net ) and the Town Hall
(091 - 569777 and www.tht.ie )
