The long odyssey of Philly’s legendary Sigma Sound Studios

Not seen nor heard

The Philly Sound had a preview screening at the Kimmel Center last fall, and was selected for this year’s Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, to be held in October. Yet Nicoletti, whose previous documentary Once In A Hundred Years: The Life and Legacy of Marian Anderson (2019) won a regional Emmy, envisions a national audience for The Philly Sound.

“To people outside of Philadelphia, they look at it as a very narrow subject matter,” said Nicoletti. “But this is much bigger than a film about a Philly studio. This is a film about people working together from all walks of life.” After lengthy conversations with the late Tarsia in 2014, Nicoletti began filming The Philly Sound the following year. As more interviews began to take place, former WSFS CEO Mark Turner signed on as an executive producer, along with John Legend (who also appears in the documentary) and NBC Today Show regular Al Roker.

By 2021, The Philly Sound was nearing completion, and pitch meetings with major studios began to take place. Then, in August of that year, Nicoletti received some wonderful news. “I was on the top of the ferris wheel in Ocean City with my boys and my phone rang,” Nicoletti said, “It was Peacock, saying they wanted to make a deal. That was a really happy moment.”

That happy moment didn’t last long, however.

Beat of a different drum

Not long after, Nicoletti was informed by the music publishing company he’d licensed songs from that he couldn’t use any of the songs due to a conflict of interest with another project. Since many of The Philly Sound’s interviews were built around the stories behind certain key songs, the news was a crushing blow to Nicoletti’s project. The Peacock deal soon dissolved. “I personally went from being the highest I’d ever been professionally to completely devastated,” Nicoletti said.

While Nicoletti considered shutting down production on The Philly Sound, he instead decided to switch gears and remake the film, using Sigma Sound-recorded music from other sources, including Drexel

University’s archive of Sigma Sound songs. “I knew that about half of the film wasn’t going to change,” Nicoletti said. “And it allowed me to use a lot of songs that I left on the table that I personally loved.”

It took a year and a half to make the revised version of The Philly Sound—what Nicoletti calls “the better version.” He brought it back to Peacock, who loved it, but the budget that they offered couldn’t absorb the licensing costs for the songs. “We’ve received offers on this film from very credible sources—but they’re the kind of offers that only work if you have funding in place,” Nicoletti said. “AMC Theatres, for example, wanted to put this into every major market, and do a real splash with it, but I can’t do anything unless I can pay for the music.”

“We’re working every day,” he said, “to try and make another connection.”