Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

Ennio Morricone musik-base.de You might be walking about humming Ennio Morricone’s songs and you won’t even know it.

In his long and prolific musical career, he has written more soundtracks for cowboy movies than one would care to remember. He is the man we have to thank for the actual term “spaghetti western.”

He is the guy who helped turn Clint Eastwood into a household name. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, A Fist Full of Dollars, and For a Few Dollars More are some of the most popular movies that featured Morricone’s soundracks.

That was a particular period of his musical career — and he’s done so much more than that.

He has composed over 500 sountracks in a variety of genres, from jazz and classical to traditional Italian and electronic music.

His musical combinations often surprise: he combines church organ with a piccolo flute, whistle and percussion, choir singing and atonal melodic patterns. His nearly 50-year musical career began when child prodigy, aged 9, picked up a trumpet.

At 13 he was already performing with Rome Opera Theatre’s symphony orchestra. He composed for radio dramas and TV series, dreaming to create movie soundtracks one day for a living.

Now, aged 82, he is still in high demand. Most recently Quentin Tarantino used several Morricone’s tracks from previous films in the soundtrack to his film “Inglourious Basterds” in 2009.

For the first time in Kyiv, Morricone will perform a selection of his hits with the symphony orchestra and a choir of about 100 people.

Tue, Dec 20, 7 p.m., Palats Ukraina, 103 Velyka Vasylkivska St., tickets: Hr 350-5,900.