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09/09/2015 08:00 AMRenowned musician, film composer, and Clinton native Susan DiBona has created a life overseas, living and working in Germany and Italy for the past two decades, but a chance to visit home—and support the memory of her father, Bob DiBona—has her headed home to headline a benefit concert on Friday, Sept. 25, at 7:30 p.m. at The Morgan School.
The show—featuring original piano works from films screened at Cannes, Comic-Con, Fantasia Film Festival, and other major events—will raise money for the Robert DiBona Scholarship Foundation.
This performance marks the first time Susan has played in the U.S. in more than 20 years.
Growing up in Clinton, she studied piano with Leopold Godowsky (a nephew of George Gershwin) and directed various high school musical productions before moving to New York and eventually landing roles as music director, vocal coach, and arranger for Leonard Bernstein’s On the Town (a co-production of Barnard College and Juilliard School) and an American tour of South Pacific.
After an extended tour, Susan settled in Germany and joined Berlin’s fertile music scene.
If all of that sounds exciting—and, she admits, it was—it had also become exhausting.
“I was really starting to feel stifled by city life,” she says. “By a stroke of fate, I met Salvatore Sangiovanni, a kindred spirit in all things, including music.”
An accomplished opera composer and winner of 15 international piano competitions, Sangiovanni had planned to collaborate with Susan on a music project. After months of conversation, the two met face to face in Naples at a piano master class.
“I knew right away that Italy was the place for me,” Susan recalls. “In a spirit of adventure, and following all of my best instincts, I left Germany and moved to the Mediterranean coast.”
She and Sangiovanni, who will be performing with her in Clinton this month, are engaged to be married.
“We soon joined forces businesswise as well,” she adds.
Last December, they founded The Villa Studios, a production company that creates TV and movie scores for clients around the globe.
“Technology makes it all possible,” says Susan. “There’s no need to live in a metropolis anymore to do this kind of work.”
The Villa Studios is located in Praia a Mare, a coastal town reminiscent in many ways of Susan’s native Clinton.
“It’s good to wake up and see the ocean every day,” she says. “Praia a Mare has almost the same population as Clinton, and of course we have a ton of summer people and tourists. Luckily I came prepared for that, growing up on the Connecticut shoreline.”
So, how does it feel to be playing for a hometown crowd again?
“I have a lot of fond memories from working in venues in and around Clinton,” she says. “Honestly, I can’t wait to get on stage, although I never thought I’d say that again. A number of years ago I’d sworn off performing publicly, basically because of the stress and pressure I used to put on myself in front of an audience.”
DiBona’s last U.S. performance was in 1994, on a national tour of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific as part of the pit orchestra. She was 20.
Since then, nearly all her activity as a musician, composer, and conductor has taken place in recording studios.
With a little nudge from her partner, however, she’s ready to face a live audience again.
“Salvatore urged me get up there with him in honor of my dad, and it’s definitely for a good cause. So here I am.”
Now in its 20th year, the Robert DiBona Scholarship Foundation recognizes high school students who reside in Clinton and are active in their community. Scholarships totaling $3,000 are awarded on the basis of merit and financial need.
Bob DiBona, a local activist and volunteer, passed away in 2002.
“He recognized the importance of a solid education,” Susan says of her father. “He encouraged me and my siblings to work hard in school and in extracurricular activities.
Unlike in Europe, where access to quality education is a basic right, Susan says, higher education in the U.S. is a high-cost commodity.”
“Students from underprivileged and even middle-class families often have to work minimum wage jobs at the same time they’re trying to get a degree, while their peers who may have more financial power are free to study all the time. It’s a real disadvantage. Unfortunately, you see it happening all the time at American universities. So, there’s an increased need for these types of scholarships.”
The benefit concert takes place at The Morgan School’s Gagnon Auditorium. General admission tickets are available for $10 at Malone’s Coffee House, Cindy Stevens Fine Arts Gallery, and Shore TV and Appliance in Clinton. For more information, call 203-915-2084.