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 m…