Michele Lacerenza

Michele Lacerenza (born January 7, 1922 in Tarent, Italy - died November 17, 1989 in Rome) was the trumpeter who performed the unforgettable solo in the score of Sergio Leone's “For a Fistful of Dollars”. Ennio Morricone remembers him as “a sublime trumpeter. I had his trumpet in mind when I composed that solo. In the beginning, Sergio Leone wanted Nini Rosso, a famous italian trumpeter, to play the trumpet for the film score, and Michele knew it well. So he played that solo in such a breathtaking manner that he himself was driven to tears. And in the end Sergio too was moved by that heartbreaking sound”. Vinicio Capossela, a renowned Italian singer, admits: “That trumpet breaks Leone’s long, silent sequences like a cry rising from the desert stones. The Lord’s trumpet calls the souls to the judgment, Lacerenza’s calls them to the final showdown”. In 1964, after the exploit of “For a Fistful of Dollars”, Lacerenza’s trumpet became a fetish for an endless number of spaghetti-western movies. Lacerenza’s trumpet immediately evokes the gritty and grimy West of Sergio Leone and of his countless imitators. A West closer to Southern Italy than to John Ford’s films. Michele Lacerenza was not simply a performer, his interpretation of the final solo of “For a Fistful of Dollars”, according to Morricone himself, was his own interpretation of the score. A musical attitude which had its roots in Lacerenza’s origin: born in the Apulian town of Trinitapoli, he had grown musically in the local citizens band, thus acquiring the peculiar passionate style of those popular ensembles.