In an interview from 2002, the conductor, composer and arranger Bruno Canfora recounts his work with Mina and remembers in particular her performances at Sanremo during the early years of her career:
[…]
Canfora: Having met Mina was the best gift that anyone could have given me. I cannot see how my work could have developed to the same level without her. She gave me the opportunity to write and arrange as I wished. To be able to write and arrange music just as you like as a musician requires certain resources. You have to be personally able, of course… but if there hadn’t been Mina there to carry everything, to allow us to achieve everything carrying it all with her abilities, perfection, musicality, voice, intonation, and innovation. Mina lifts the things you write to another level, she makes them physical, real, tangible. Mina perfectly exemplifies what you hoped to achieve when writing. She can do it. She possesses everything that is required to do this. You start to understand this immediately the first time you listen to her.
Interviewer: That’s right. And she had all that at Sanremo.
Canfora: She was so beautiful, great, so important even from an early ago. Authoritative. I had already met her before, at an afternoon TV show directed by Guido Sacerdote and Antonello Falqui. They said to me that she was a guest on the show and asked me to prepare something for her. I scribbled down an orchestral arrangement of ‘A foggy day (in London town)’ for her. It was marvellous listening to her. It’s a recollection that I have carried with me to this day. Always. I’ll always have that sound of ‘A foggy day’ performed by her in an undertone, with her voice well supported by the orchestra and her conception of the piece so evidently close to mine as the arranger. How on earth she managed to sing it like that we’ll never know. Talent. Raw talent. She had never taken singing lessons, she didn’t have a lot of experience, but she knew how to create different tones with her voice and even if she didn’t know how to do that from a technical perspective, she could just do it instinctively. The important thing was that she would give you these sorts of things, and then some! A little girl of 19 years of age from Cremona who understood perfectly what a piece of music needed. Can you understand why I feel so lucky to have met her?
Interviewer: Yes. And so you both found yourselves at Sanremo 61.
Canfora: Yes, Mina sang ‘Le mille bolle blu’ with me. An impossible piece. I mean, it’s very beautiful but very difficult. Also because in order to sing those sorts of things, you have to be able to feel a bit silly. Think about it, about her, with that line ‘bblll, vedo turbinar le mille blu… blll’ with its evolution: what do you do about it? Well she knew what to do and did it in the best way possible. She had Fortune on her side. Because really it is luck to be born that way: capable, good… but saying good doesn’t really mean anything. Because Mina isn’t good. She’s so much better than good, there’s nothing else to say. To define her in terms of being good and capable is to limit her to a particular role that she naturally surpasses. By naturally, I mean with her incredible natural abilities that she was born with. There’s nothing more to say. So to have her by your side, as both inspiration and accomplice for your work, meant knowing that you could do everything that you wanted to. Let me say it again: the word good just doesn’t do Mina justice. She’s so much more than that.
You can listen to five of Mina’s CDs back to back and never get tired. Rather, you are constantly struck by what you are hearing, and continue to find new surprises and inventions song after song.
And it doesn’t matter what she sings. It might be the most beautiful song, it might be the stupidest little ditty. But it can’t be thanks to her, good heavens no! – because you cannot, you just cannot have such a fantastic talent, humanly speaking – it must be a divine gift, but that’s the way it is: that’s what she has’.
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(translated from an interview published on http://www.minamazzini.it/it/interviste/bruno-canfora/ [accessed May 2016])
Here is Mina singing a medley of some of Canfora’s songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wuVN74Jqxw
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