“Susan DiBona & Salvatore Sangiovanni (she’s American, he’s Italian) have a compositional story that’s particular and exciting: despite different sonic/cultural backgrounds, their almost identical musical loves lead their style into a multiracial, variegated and intrinsically cinematic musical universe.
They astonish us with both their originality and cultured references to well-known compositional worlds, never copying, but simply paying homage with that pure and natural devotion reserved for those who truly know how to create Music with passion and daring.”
Massimo Privitera, International Film Music Critics Association
Photo Credits: Giorgio Violino
Photo Credits: Giorgio Violino
Photo Credits: Giorgio Violino
American-born composer Susan DiBona and her Italian composing partner Salvatore Sangiovanni have worked on nearly 60 original film and television scores as well as music for commercials, opera, games, top 40 pop music, musicals, and ballet since creating The Villa Studios Praia a Mare in southern Italy.
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From there, their music has traveled the world over - from Dubai to India to USA, from Finland to Canada, from Germany to the UK - and has been heard by tens of millions of film and TV viewers worldwide.
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Photo Credits: Bas Bogaerts // Film Fest Gent
Photo Credits: Bas Bogaerts // Film Fest Gent
Susan DiBona, born in New Haven, CT and based in Italy since 2014, is a prolific film composer who has created, produced, orchestrated and conducted nearly 60 original scores for popular European and international prime-time TV shows, series and numerous international feature films.
A poly-instrumentalist as well as multilingual, she has conducted such prestigious orchestras as the Rome Film Orchestra, the Berliner Symphoniker, ensembles of the Babelsberger Filmorchester, I Solisti Aquilani and the RAI National Symphony Orchestra in Turin, Italy.
She attended the Buddy Baker/ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop at NYU and was mentored there by Mark Snow and Oscar-winning composer Carter Burwell's orchestrator, Sonny Kompanek.
Her first piano and theory teacher at the age of seven was the composer and virtuoso pianist Leopold Godowksky III, the nephew of George Gershwin, who encouraged her to develop her natural composition skills at a very young age.
Susan has also written many original songs for TV and cinema, one of which was recently shortlisted for the prestigious Italian cinema award, Premio David di Donatello.
A former longtime resident of Berlin-Kreuzberg, Germany, she has a varied background in music from every angle: she's toured with rock bands, directed musicals, written operas, worked as a session pianist and orchestrator, vocal coached, arranged, and penned lyrics for charting artists under contract with BMG/Universal Music.
Salvatore Sangiovanni, born in Italy, is an internationally acclaimed virtuoso concert and jazz pianist whose composing skills range from classic Italian opera to American big band and beyond. A winner of many international piano competitions, he holds a post-graduate degree in classical piano performance from The Royal School of London.
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He studied film scoring and orchestration under Carlo Crivelli and was mentored by Maestro Ennio Morricone.
Sal also studied jazz with Michel Camilo (faculty member of The Juilliard School) and be-bop legend Barry Harris.
Together, DiBona & Sangiovanni are able to express and execute a virtually unlimited range of musical styles and techniques, whether using MIDI, chamber ensemble or large symphonic orchestra.
They orchestrate all their own compositions and have written many original songs especially for the films they’ve scored.
