Composer Ennio Morricone is celebrating his 90th birthday on Nov. 10, and he has been nothing but prolific as of late. He won his second Oscar at 87 for scoring Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, and is currently on The 60 Years of Music Tour of Europe, which runs through late January 2019.

While his work for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is considered some of the best music ever written for film, it’s just one small part of the more than 500 film and TV works he has composed, as well as 100 pieces in his classical music canon. Just shy of entering his 10th decade, Morricone shares some knowledge from real-life experiences.