- published: 23 Oct 2010
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William "Bill" Conti (born April 13, 1942) is an American film music composer who is frequently the conductor at the Academy Awards ceremony.
Conti, an Italian American, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the son of Lucetta and William Conti. He graduated from North Miami High School in 1959. He is a past winner of the Silver Knight Award presented by the Miami Herald. He is a graduate of Louisiana State University, and also studied at the Juilliard School of Music.
His big break into celebrity came in 1976, when he was hired to compose the music for a small United Artists film called Rocky. The film became a phenomenon, and Conti's training montage tune, "Gonna Fly Now" topped the Billboard singles chart in 1977. He also composed music for the sequels Rocky II (1979), Rocky III (1982), Rocky V (1990) and Rocky Balboa (2006).
Conti also worked for some other films and, eventually, for television series. In 1981, he wrote the music for the James Bond film, For Your Eyes Only, when John Barry was unwilling to return to the United Kingdom for tax reasons, and provided the score for playwright Jason Miller's film version of his Pulitzer Prize winning play That Championship Season the following year.
Vince DiCola (born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania) is an American composer, keyboardist, and arranger best known for his work on the The Transformers: The Movie, Staying Alive and Rocky IV soundtracks. DiCola also pioneered the use of sequencers on his soundtrack recording for Rocky IV, one of the first to exploit the Fairlight CMI & Synclavier II's computer's sequencing capabilities.
Vincent Louis DiCola aka Vince DiCola was born in Lancaster Pennsylvania in 1960 to Italian-American parents. After majoring in percussion in college, DiCola began his professional music career upon moving to California in 1981. One of his early credits as a session musician was his synthesizer performance on Juice Newton's Dirty Looks and Old Flame albums released in 1983 and 1985, respectively. His first major break came when he was chosen to co-write several songs on the Staying Alive soundtrack (1983) with Frank Stallone. Following his work on the Staying Alive project, he was recruited by Sylvester Stallone to write the original score for Rocky IV (1985), followed by scoring the original animated Transformers movie in 1986. Since then he has been active in the capacity of producer, recorded and performed as both a solo artist and member of several bands, and continues to work as a session musician and contributor to film soundtracks as composer and performer.