Mario Mariani

Mario Mariani (born 6 October 1970) is an Italian pianist, composer, and performer.

Born in Pesaro, Italy, Mario Mariani graduated in Piano at the Conservatorio Gioachino Rossini in 1995.

After creating the experimental band Broz Ensemble, he began to write movie soundtracks for highly appreciated Italian directors and artists, including Vittorio Moroni, Gianluigi Toccafondo and Matteo Pellegrini. He also writes musics for TV advertisings for clients like Microsoft, Toyota, Ferrero, Tele2 and Fiat.

He composed two different editions of the main theme for the prestigious Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica of Venice’s Biennale in 1999-2001 and 2005-2007.

Strongly recognizable for his personal and eclectic approach on piano, Mario Mariani imagines his instrument as an orchestra, with a style that goes from contemporary music to theatrical performances, often in collaboration with actors and visual artists like Giuliano Del Sorbo, Massimo Ottoni and Graziella Galvani. He calls his style “transpersonal instantaneous composition”.

In 2008 he won the first prize at Novaracinefestival for Best Soundtrack with the movie “under my garden” by Andrea Lodovichetti.

In 2010 he brought a grand piano into a cave called “Grotta dei Prosciutti”, on the top of a mountain called Monte Nerone, living there for a whole month and offering one free concert each night.

He created a unique festival named “Teatro Libero del Monte Nerone” (Free theatre of Monte Nerone) that takes place every August since 2011 in the middle of a wood between Marche and Umbria.

With his second piano solo album “Elementalea” (2011) he starts his own label named “Zingaroton”. Mariani played since 2013 Danny Elfman’s scores Beetlejuice and Scissorhands and Bernard Hermanns Psycho score.

Mario Mariani works intensively and for a long time with silent movies. After his debut in the 90’s with Pesaro’s Mostra Internazionale del Nuovo Cinema within Silent Cinema retrospective, when he plays (always improvising) on David Wark Griffith, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Robert Wiene, Fritz Lang, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, George Melies, Dziga Vertov. The only written music is the original soundtrack for the silent Italian movie Caina (1922, Gennaro Righelli).

The “A Silent Christmas” project is composed by 4 silent movies based on Christmas (A Christmas Carol, A Trap for Santa Claus [1925, by Kleinschmidt], A winter straw ride). In 2014 he realized the music for piano and organ for “Life and Passion of Jesus” by Ferdinand Zecca.