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 50 original film and television scores as well as music for commercials, opera, games, top 40 pop music, musical theater, and ballet since creating The Villa Studios Praia a Mare in southern Italy.
From there, their music has traveled the world over - from Dubai to India to USA, from Finland to Canada, from Greece to the UK - and has been heard by tens of millions of film and TV viewers worldwide.
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 over 50 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 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.
She is slated to conduct original commissioned works with the renowned Italian Solisti Aquilani chamber orchestra in autumn 2023 for an album recording alongside other award-winning contemporary Italian film composers.
Susan DiBona is the founder and co-owner of The Villa Studios Praia a Mare, an independent film music production house in Italy along with her partner, the composer and pianist Salvatore Sangiovanni.
Photo Credits: Bas Bogaerts // Film Fest Gent
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. He holds a post-graduate degree in classical piano performance from The Royal School of London.
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.
Photo Credits: Bas Bogaerts // Film Fest Gent
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.
Greatly favored by European film music critics and fans, DiBona&Sangiovanni are 2021 nominees for the World Soundtrack Awards Public Choice Award. They have have recently been in competition for the Italian Golden Globes 2021 and David di Donatello 2021 for the French-Italian feature film, "I LIVIATANI” / “Bad Habits Die Hard" and 2022 for "Une seule chance". "In viaggio con Lei", completed in October 2023, is currently in the running for the David di Donatello 2024.
The duo were nominated in 2017 by the prestigious, Milan-based Colonne Sonore magazine as Best Italian Composers and for Best Italian Film Music of 2016 for the Italian horror/giallo feature "The Transparent Woman", finding themselves honored to be among the ranks of Oscar winners John Williams, James Horner, Ennio Morricone and Alexandre Desplat.
Their score for The Transparent Woman also garnered two Silver Medals at the Global Music Awards: Fan Favorite and Best Film Composer.
