Renzo Arbore

All Music Guide:

Italian media personality Renzo Arbore was born in Foggia in 1937. After completing his high-school education, Arbore moved to Naples, where he would attain a law degree. In his mid-twenties Arbore began working at a radio station as a programmer, winning the Yellow Flag Award in 1965 for his promise as a young media talent. His program Per Voi Giovani, launched two years later, saw that promise become a reality. The radio program paved the way for Speciale per Voi, Italy's very first television talk show, featuring Arbore as the host. His TV exploits lasted throughout the '60s and into the '70s with the launch of TV quiz show L'Atra Domenica (the first to feature telephone calls to obtain audience opinions), among others. Arbore made his directorial debut in 1980 with the film Il Pap'occhio, playing the lead opposite Roberto Benigni. Arbore made forays into the musical world in 1981 as a vocalist and clarinetist with Telepatria International, which paved the way for his debut album, Ora o Mai Piu, Ovvero Canautore da Grande. The '80s were extremely kind to Arbore, with a number of releases going gold or better. Ma la Notte went on to sell an impressive 800,000 copies, followed by Meglio dal Vivo Che dal Morto, which sold over 500,000. Arbore's popularity continued to climb steadily into the '90s, with his releases gaining greater international notice and his band performing on some of the world's most important stages, including the Montreux Jazz Festival and Carnegie Hall in the early '90s, followed by Madison Square Garden and the Olympia in Paris during the late '90s. Renzo Arbore and his band had become the first name in Italian swing. In 2002 Arbore founded a new band, called Renzo Arbore & His Swing Maniacs, ushered in by the band's debut disc, Tonite! Renzo Swing!, which quickly went platinum. Arbore celebrated his 70th birthday with the release of L'Orchestra Italiana at Carnegie Hall.

Wikipedia:

Lorenzo Giovanni (Renzo) Arbore (Italian pronunciation: [ˈrɛntso ˈarbore]; born June 24, 1937 in Foggia) is an Italian TV host, showman, singer, musician, film actor and film director.

Career

Arbore became nationally recognized as radio anchor man, together with Gianni Boncompagni, in the late 1960s, with shows such as Bandiera gialla (1965), Per voi giovani (1967), Alto Gradimento (1970), increasingly marked by their ironical approach which later became one of their brands. He debuted in Italian television with Speciale per voi (1969–1970), which included debates about singers of that age. His first great TV success was the surreal L'altra domenica ("The Other Sunday", 1976–1979), in which he launched numerous comedians including Mario Marenco, Isabella Rossellini and Roberto Benigni. Also very successful were Quelli della notte (1985), with Nino Frassica, Riccardo Pazzaglia, Maurizio Ferrini, and Roberto D'Agostino, and Indietro tutta!(1988), again with Frassica, which established Arbore as one of the most intelligent and cult figures of Italian televisions.

In the meantime Arbore wrote and directed the movies Il pap'occhio (1980) and "FF.SS." – Cioè: "...che mi hai portato a fare sopra a Posillipo se non mi vuoi più bene?" (1983), both surreal stories featuring numerous actors launched by him and others friends (including Luciano De Crescenzo, Benigni, Rossellini and many others), set in his adoptive city of Naples. Arbore also played and sung in numerous of his shows, notably in Quelli della Notte and Indietro tutta!, whose music albums sold hundreds of thousand copies in Italy.

An apt amateur clarinet player, in 1991 Arbore founded the Orchestra Italiana, a group of 15 artists with the aim to popularize Neapolitan music worldwide. The orchestra has toured in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. He was also director of the Umbria Jazz festival. His last TV show is Speciale per me - Meno siamo, meglio stiamo! on Rai Uno.

Recently, he received the 2010 America Award from the Italy-USA Foundation.