The Outsized Importance of Celso Valli
The musician, performer, arranger, composer and producer partook in prog rock, disco, musica leggera and classical crossover. Discover some of his most iconic (and underground) disco productions.
Equally at ease with symphonic orchestras and synths, Celso Valli (1950-2025) was a leading figure in Italian music, with his contributions spanning a wide variety of genres, including disco, funk, Italo disco, prog rock, pop, and even classical crossover. Valli was, in equal measure, a musician (a conservatory- trained keyboardist), arranger, and producer.
There is no single description that can fully capture his style across such a broad spectrum of production, but Valli’s true talent lay in his ability to “upgrade” new and underground musical trends and weave them into popular culture without ever making them sound forced. His earliest and most underground disco productions, for example, blended rock, pop, Afro, and Latin beats with seamless experimentation—giving life to something that felt entirely fresh.
As a performer, he started off as a keyboardist, and joined the prog-rock band Ping Pong. He was also part of the Italian-American disco quartet The Passengers, best known among mainstream audiences for “He’s Speedy Like Gonzales” (1979) and “Hot Leather” (1979). He was also part of Tantra, where he yielded the exotic and futuristic-inspired “Hills of Kathmandu” (1980), which reached n.2 on the US Disco Chart for three weeks in 1980. As a composer, he penned the space-jazz-funk hybrid “Sessuologia” (1975) for Paolo Zavellone, professionally known as El Pasador. He also composed and produced the now legendary Disco Fizz LP by Azoto (1979), with “San Salvador” being the best known track, combining latin, early disco, and Italo-disco influences, Neon’s “Skydiver” (1981), which has a rock-like instrumental base and disco-like vocals.
When it came to arranging and producing, he was behind some of the most notable tracks of the 1980s. He arranged Mina’s “Morirò Per Te” (1982), composed by Pino Presti and notable for how it both paid homage to the Philly sound and also anticipated tropes of 90s Eurodance by juxtaposing soaring, disco-inspired vocals, to an electronic and synth-laden instrumental base, and for Mina, he also penned the tracks “Musica d'Argentina,” “Ballando ballando” e “Perfetto non so.” In terms of mainstream successes, he arranged Marcella Bella’s “Nell’aria” (1983), RAF’s “Self Control” (1984), Matia Bazar’s “Ti sento” (1985) as a producer, and Fiorella Mannoia’s “Quello che le donne non dicono” (1987). He also channelled Moroder and Cerrone to arrange Adriano Pappalardo’d “Hi Fi,”(1979) the B-side of his mainstream success “Ricominciamo.”
Into the 1990s, he became known for power ballads and classical crossovers: in 1994, he arranged Giorgia’s “Come saprei,” co-authored and produced Gerardina Trovato’s “Vivere,” (reprised by Andrea Bocelli and covered by Laura Pausini as “Dare to Live”) and produced Patty Pravo’s “E dimmi che non vuoi morire” in 1997. He also collaborated with Ornella Vanoni on her 1992 album Stella nascente, where he arranged both the mid-tempo title track and the Italo-disco-inflected “Ci vorresti tu.” Longtime collaborations with the likes of Andrea Bocelli and Eros Ramazzotti cemented this direction.
However, being a newsletter dedicated to Italian disco culture, we want to celebrate Celso Valli’s brilliant disco productions—some widely known, others more hidden gems—but all equally deserving of renewed attention in today’s cultural landscape. These are some staples in my DJ sets, and no matter in what city or context I play them, they are deeply loved by the people on the dance floor.
