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IL CAPO DI SUGAR

Getting to Know Filippo Sugar

The seeds for Si, the first chart-topping U.S. and U.K. debut of Andrea Bocelli’s quarter-century recording career, were sown in the Milan headquarters of Sugar Music under the supervision of Filippo Sugar, 46, who has headed the company for nearly two decades. We asked the Chairman about the history of Sugar Music and the making of the landmark Bocelli album.

Can you give us a brief history of your company?
My grandfather [Ladislao Sugar], who was Hungarian, came to Italy in the 1930s. He loved the country and decided to stay. His name is actually pronounced “SHU-gar.” He was an impresario and started a music-publishing business that was successful. So this company that I’m now the head of has been a family company since 1932.

Sugar Music has done particularly well with cinema scores: Morricone, Rota, La Dolce Vita, Amarcord...
We have a large soundtrack repertoire, both publishing and masters, which my grandfather started in the 1930s. There’s also a lot of songs that have become hits in different countries, including America, mostly in English versions. He built a very big Italian record company in the 1950s that we sold to Warner in ’89. There was also a joint venture with CBS at the time of Walter Yetnikoff called CBS Sugar. We sold that company to Warner in ’89 and started the Sugar label in 1990.

As a label, the activity is ongoing. We have a lot of things coming out in Italy, from superstar artists to new acts that we’re working on. Obviously, for Italy to go international is not that easy. We have a history of songs that have gone international, like “Gloria” [a hit for Laura Branigan in 1979], “Self Control” [Branigan covered it in 1984] and other Italian songs from the ’80s that became successful in America and the U.K. This is always what we’ve done. We’ve always worked with Italian artists and writers, tried to be successful in Italy and, whatever possible, tried to reach out to a larger audience.

Are you distributed by one of the majors?
We are distributed by an independent in Italy. Outside of Italy, we license according to the different projects, so we have Bocelli with Universal, and we have other artists with other labels. We are very close to signing another artist with an international label that’s going to be launched next year with a German label.

You were elected the head of Italy’s performing-rights organization in 2015. That’s quite an honor.
Yes. I finished this summer as Chairman of SIAE, an Italian collective publishing and rights society. It was an honor and a lot of work.

How did the Andrea Bocelli project evolve?
We started from one consideration: We were strongly committed to working on new songs; we felt the streaming scenario made it necessary for us to go to new songs. That was the first decision. To get Andrea excited about this, we started working with the writers who had brought Andrea’s most popular songs to him: We went back to Francesco Sartori and Mauro Malavasi, who were involved with “Time to Say Goodbye” and “Con te partirò”; that was the beginning of the process.

Once Andrea was excited about coming back to work on new songs, we then thought about the direction of the album. Lucian told me right in the beginning of this project, “We have to make the most best classical album ever.” We thought about an album of new material arranged in a classical fashion so that we have timeless music. Very little percussion, drums or rhythm sections. Basically, we wanted to have big orchestral arrangements, so that was the idea when we looked for a producer. At the time, I was talking a lot with Ross Cullum, who is a producer and writer and also A&R in the U.K. And amongst the different names we were thinking about—because we thought we needed a new producer, Ross suggested that I meet with Bob Ezrin.

I’d never met Bob before, but the meeting went very well, because I sensed that he really was excited about this project. He told me the arrangers he had worked with on that album he did with Peter Gabriel [the first of Gabriel’s four consecutive self-titled LPs, released in 1977]. He told me that those were the people he wanted be involved. So there was very strong excitement at the first meeting and the follow-up meetings. And then, when Bob and Andrea met, the chemistry was incredible, so we ended up doing the whole album with Bob.

At what point did Decca U.K. become involved in the process?
With respect to the previous albums, we were signed to Universal Music International. We didn’t really have a label within the system; we were signed by Max Hole, basically. So, from then onwards, we went with Decca. Dickon Stainer is head of Classical, and Becky Allen is President of Decca, and they came in early this time. We were really working together as a team. It’s not like we built something here, flew to London and said, “This is the album.” We involved them, interacted with them and exchanged advice. It was a three-year process, and they really felt the album was theirs also. I think that’s part of the key to this success.

By asking you to make the best classical album ever, Lucian set the bar extremely high.
His reasoning was, we have the greatest classical artists today, and we have to make an album that sounds of that world. I took his advice quite seriously; I thought it was quite a wise piece of advice. We were [originally] thinking about changing the direction because of how everything is changing today, but then we said, “This is what we are—let’s make a great album that is exactly where we are. Then let’s reach out to contemporary successful artists that we’d like to partner with, and let’s ask them if they want to come over and come into Andrea’s world.” That was very exciting, because we had this duet with Josh Groban, then we had Ed Sheeran. The relationship with Ed Sheehan is a beautiful story, and so is the Dua Lipa relationship. We have Ed Sheeran singing in Italian and Dua Lipa singing certain parts in Italian. Maybe it’s obvious, but when you start working on a new album with an artist who is not a writer, you have to look for songs, and getting a coherent idea is important.

What is it that makes this album coherent?
The arrangements, which are classical although in a way contemporary. Like “Fall on Me” with his son Mateo—which is in the Disney movie The Nutcracker—that song is a contemporary piece of music; the way Bob arranged it is symbolic of the [general] idea of the album.

Does your job entail much traveling?
I travel, yes, but a little bit less when I was Chairman of SIAE. I was in New York doing the launch of the album then in London last week. I come to New York at least a couple times a year, and at least once a year to Los Angeles and five to seven times to London.

What’s next for Bocelli?
This is the just beginning of the album. Andrea’s touring; he will be coming back to America in December and again in February or June. This album is going to last a year or more, I hope.

The Bocelli album as an international phenomenon exemplifies the opening up of borders in what is now a global music business. It’s cool that you had an opportunity to take one of your artists and spread his music around the world.
It’s a very big honor, because Andrea has been signed to the label since the very beginning. My mother [Caterina Caselli Sugar] discovered him, and it’s been a full 25 years we’ve been together. That says a lot about terms of friendship and loyalty.

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