Class with Conti
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When he thinks of Rome, he remembers the fancy nightclub and the jetsetters who came in nightly to listen to his trio play.
He was the only jazz pianist in the city, maybe all of Italy, and those nights were exciting, because people were coming to hear him. He can see the marquee now: Tonight, Bill Conti.
Every night, Bill Conti.
People living in Rome called him a star. And he was in their city, playing that American music they craved. That was jazz, after all, the truest of American art forms.
It still is.
And Conti was good at it. Maybe too good.
He’d been playing piano in jazz bars since he was a 14-year-old high school kid in Florida, which made it easy for him to find jobs in Baton Rouge clubs to defray college and living costs while at LSU.
And there he was, a star in Rome. It did a lot for his ego but not his career.
No one but Conti was around the day Morris West said the life-changing words.
“You’re living a lie,” West said.
It was a four-word sentence that sliced straight to Conti’s heart. No, wait. It was more of a punch.
Conti doesn’t have to admit any of this in his storytelling; he could say, “Hey, Morris West gave me a break,” because it was true. The Australian novelist’s offer wasn’t something Conti couldn’t refuse. It was, however, something that made Conti think.
West had made a lot of money from his best selling novels The Devil’s Advocate and The Shoes of a Fisherman. The guy had money, and he asked Conti to give his son music lessons.
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