Il Cinema Ritrovato is also one of the major international festivals of silent cinema. Rediscovering silent film and bringing it back to life also means rediscovering, reconstructing, improvising, and composing the music that accompanies it. The finest silent film musicians, established masters as well as young talents, have always come to Bologna from all over the world. Their personal quests for that magical harmony, or the perfect tension between image and music, are among the reasons why every screening at Il Cinema Ritrovato is a unique and special experience.
Frank Bockius studied at the conservatory in Trossingen, Germany. He works as a drums and percussion teacher and as a freelance musician. For many years he toured with the jazz quintet Whisper Hot and the percussion band Timpanicks.
Neil Brand has been a silent film accompanist for 40 years throughout the UK and at film festivals around the world. He now has a very fruitful relationship with the BBC Symphony Orchestra with his acclaimed orchestral scores for Hitchcock’s silent Blackmail, Asquith’s Underground, Chaplin’s Easy Street and Fairbanks’s Robin Hood, as well as his recent concert drama of The Hound of the Baskervilles for BBC4 starring Mark Gatiss.
Timothy Brock specialises as a conductor in concert works of the early 20th century and live performances of silent film. As a score preservationist, his work includes the restoration of Shostakovich’s New Babylon, Erik Satie’s Entr’acte, Saint-Saëns’s The Assassination of Duke DeGuise, and Wolfgang Zeller’s Vampyr.
Andrea Cauduro is a musician and composer who graduated with honours from the Casella Conservatory in L’Aquila with a thesis on John Zorn. His work spans musical research, recordings for independent labels and theatre. From 2023 to 2025 he served as collaborative musical director on productions by director Valter Malosti (Lazarus, Antonio e Cleopatra, Castelli di rabbia).
Antonio Coppola began to study the piano at a very early age. In 1965 he enrolled in the Santa Cecilia Conservatory, and followed courses in piano performance, composition and orchestral conducting until 1977.
Daniele Furlati, pianist and composer, has a degree in composition, piano and arrangement. He earned two diplomas with honours in courses in advanced music for film, taught by Ennio Morricone and Sergio Miceli at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena.
Stephen Horne, based at London’s BFI Southbank, has recorded music for DVD releases, TV screenings and online presentations of silent films.
Photo @ 片岡一郎-撮影／安達英莉
Ichiro Kataoka is among the most prominent and highly regarded contemporary benshi, celebrated, not only in Japan, for his dynamic, nuanced performances.
Katada Kisayo is a traditional Japanese percussionist who graduated from the Tokyo University of the Arts. As a member of the Shochiku Shinpa Theater Company, she composes and orchestrates Japanese music for plays, oversees onstage performances, and coaches actors in the use of musical instruments.
La Sindrome dell’Aceto was formed in 2023 when Alessandro De Lorenzi and Davide Badini – both with jazz backgrounds – joined forces to compose music for silent films and perform live scores, favouring an innovative, experimental approach using electronic sound.
Photo © Patrick Argirakis
Julie Linquette, known as DJ’itane, is a puppeteer, musician, fortune teller and barker. Of gypsy origin, her parents were street vendors selling chips in village squares in northern France and southern Belgium.
Silvia Mandolini was born in Montreal in 1970. After graduating as a violinist at the Conservatory of her hometown, she continued her studies firstly at McGill University and then at the G.
Meg Morley, Australian-born London-based pianist, composer and improviser, creates music within diverse artistic genres (silent film, contemporary dance and ballet, solo piano, contemporary jazz ensembles and electronic music).
Ramon Moro lives and works in Turin, Italy. He composes music and plays trumpet and flugelhorn. Over the past twenty-five years, he has worked in the fields of experimental jazz, pure improvisation, support for rock bands, interventions on pop and singer-songwriter albums.
Maud Nelissen is a Dutch composer and pianist who has particularly dedicated herself to the creation of musical accompaniment for silent films. She worked in Italy with Charlie Chaplin’s last music arranger Eric James. Since then she has been performing at festivals and special events in Europe, America and Asia.
Kawashima Nobuko is a satsuma biwa (a traditional Japanese lute) performer of the Tsuruta School. A graduate of Toho Gakuen College of Drama and Arts, she began her career as an actor, appearing in stage and commercial productions.
Eduardo Raon, Portuguese composer and musician, is the author of numerous projects for cinema, animation, theatre, dance and the arts. In particular, he composed the music for several silent films, including Ernst Lubitsch’s The Doll, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Dziga Vertov’s Enthusiasm – The Symphony of Donbass.
James Shelby, originally from San Francisco and now based in Bologna, has enjoyed a five-decade career as a pianist. Since 1975, he has brought his improvisational musical skills to a wide range of performances, including silent cinema, improvisational theatre, dance ensembles, and jazz vocals.
Photo @ Lorenzo-Burlando
Valeria Sturba is a multi-instrumentalist and composer working across electronic experimentation, singer-songwriter music, improvisation and music for the moving image.
John Sweeney has played for silent film since 1990, starting at Riverside Studios in London and subsequently playing at many venues in Britain including the National Film Theatre, the Barbican Cinema, Broadway in Nottingham, the Imperial War Museum, and Watershed in Bristol.
Fabiana Sommariva is an oboist (English horn) graduated from the Conservatory of Rovigo. She collaborates with the Conservatory orchestra and she worked on the soundtrack of the film Quel posto nel tempo, a production for which she was recording assistant as well.
Paolo Spaccamonti is a Turin-based guitarist and composer. His discography sums up solo albums and collaborative works with both Italian and international musicians, such as Jochen Arbeit (Einstürzende Neubauten), Stefano Pilia, Roberto “Tax” Farano (Negazione).
Gabriel Thibaudeau, born in 1959, Canadian composer, pianist and conductor, studied piano in Montreal at the Vincent D’Indy music school and composition at l’Université de Montreal. He started work at the age of 15 as a pianist for ballets.
Cleaning Women is a Finnish experimental band consisting of Risto Puurunen, Timo Kinnunen, and Tero Vänttinen, who go by the stage names CW01, CW03, and CW04. In addition to the originality of their sound, “a combination of cinematic sci-fi western and sparkling trash-can disco”, they are known for using alternative, self-made and customised instruments made from damaged household objects or material salvaged from rubbish.
Alice Zecchinelli is a composer, conductor, and multi-instrumentalist musician. After studying Classical Philology and Philosophy, she specialized in Film Scoring, further refining her craft alongside internationally renowned musicians.
