My favorite composers.
I love film music. The emotions it can arouse. The power it can express. I also love the people who bring it to life.
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British composer, primarily of film scores. From a military family and the son of a Royal Field Artillery colonel, John Mervyn Addison was born March 16, 1920, in Chobham, Surrey, and attended Wellington College, Berkshire, with plans for a military career. His interest and talent for music intervened, and he left Wellington for the Royal College of Music. With the opening of the Second World War, however, he was diverted back to the military and spent the war in a tank unit of the 22nd Hussars, being wounded in Normandy and rising to the rank of captain. After the war, he returned to the Royal College of Music, specializing in composition, clarinet, and oboe. By age 30, he had been made a professor of composition. He had previously won the RCM's Sullivan Award for Composition and was soon deluged with commissions for new compositions. He produced a wide variety of concerti, chamber pieces, and ballets. Although his first music for a film came in 1942 for Roy Boulting's Thunder Rock, his score was not used, and it was 1950 before he truly entered his principal profession, that of film composer. He scored numerous prominent films, among them Seven Days to Noon, Look Back in Anger, The Entertainer, and Tom Jones, for which he won an Academy Award. He received another Oscar nomination for his score to Sleuth, and a BAFTA nomination for his music for A Bridge Too Far, coincidentally the story of a World War II battle in which he himself had participated. In the late 1970s, Addison moved to the United States and focused a good deal of his work on television productions, most famously creating the popular theme music to the TV series Murder She Wrote. He died following a stroke, on December 7, 1998, in Bennington, Vermont. He was survived by his wife Pamela, 2 stepchildren, and 3 of his four biological children.- Music Department
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David Arnold was born on 23 January 1962 in Luton, England, UK. He is a composer and actor, known for Casino Royale (2006), Independence Day (1996) and Godzilla (1998). He has been married to Ellie Pole since 8 June 1996. They have three children.- Composer
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Richard Howard Band is an American composer of film and television music. He has scored more than 100 films, including From Beyond which won the award for Best Original Soundtrack at the Sitges - Catalan International Film Festival. His score for Re-Animator was lauded by the magazine Music From the Movies, which said, "Band's music is dark and direct, creating an intense and eerie atmosphere, but always with a humorous touch... Surely, Richard Band is one of the most underrated composers in the film business."
By the mid-80's Band was renowned for scoring horror and Sci-Fi films by employing strong, memorable and most often very melodic themes all recorded with orchestra. Films like 'Mutant (1984)', 'The Alchemist (1983)', 'The House on Sorority Row (1983)', 'Troll (1986)' and 'The Day Time Ended (1979)' all feature beautiful and lyrical themes that seem to operate as the antithesis of the genre for which the films were produced. As Band explains in liner notes in some of his soundtrack releases, he believes that "film scores exist to add a third dimension to a two-dimensional medium".
As the son of independent film producer, director and writer Albert Band, Richard and his brother Charles Band pursued their father's ambitions in film. Where Charles became a prolific producer, director and distributor, Richard's music and cinematic talent led him into the realm of film composing. Becoming interested in music while living in Europe, Richard toured with various rock groups between 1965 and 1971 before returning to the US. After studying music formally for several years Richard made his scoring debut, alongside Jerry Goldsmith's son Joel Goldsmith, on Compass Films production of 'Laserblast (1978)'. Richard rapidly moved from electronic to orchestral music, resulting in a number of full-bodied, orchestral thematic soundtracks that gave melodic power to a number of movies several of which Charles produced for Empire Pictures, among them The Day Time Ended (1979), Troll (1986), Zone Troopers (1985), ReAnimator (1985), Prison (1987), Ghoulies (1985) and From Beyond (1986).
He also brought on famed composer Shirley Walker as conductor and co-orchestrator on his score for Ghost Warrior (performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, 1984) as well as Ghoulies (1985). It was for the Universal 3D release of Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn (1983), that Richard composed one of his most epic, and adventurous scores.
Beyond Charles' productions, Richard Band showed his diversity with the comedies Lunch Wagon (1981) and Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype (1980), while writing the chillingly melodic score for the slasher favorite The House on Sorority Row (1983). Richard found new acclaim when he teamed with filmmaker Stuart Gordon for the blackly comic Re-Animator (1985), a soundtrack famed for its tribute to the work of Psycho composer Bernard Herrmann. Band's H.P. Lovecraft-themed collaborations with Gordon include the otherworldly tonalities of From Beyond (1986) and the terrifying vengeance of Castle Freak (1995).
The director and composer also adapted the work of Edgar Allen Poe with darkly religious inquisition for their adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum (1991), with Band exploring one of Lovecraft's most terrifying works for director Dan O'Bannon on The Resurrected (1991).
When the direct-to-video label Full Moon Entertainment was launched, Richard would score some of the label's more ambitious productions, including numerous entries in the continuing PuppetMaster franchise, the twisted terror of Demonic Toys (1992) and Shrunken Heads (1994) with Danny Elfman. The children's' comedies Remote (1993), Prehysteria (1993) and the fantasy Dragonworld (1994) were films released through Paramount Pictures.
In the mid 1990's, Richard branched more into television co-scoring the A & E network's documentaries Weapons at War, Most Decorated as well as numerous episodes of Biography and The Civil War Journals. Later in the 90s Band scored multiple episodes of Stargate SG-1 (1997) and Walker, Texas Ranger (1997) His genre notoriety also saw him score three episodes of Masters of Horror, earning him his first Emmy nomination for the Stuart Gordon-directed episode of Dreams in The Witch House (2005).
Richard went on to work with the WB network creating promotional music for most of their prime-time shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gilmore Girls, Dawson's Creek and Smallville amongst others. Band also scored over 200 animated vignettes for Orchestra for the WB's Kids Network.
During the mid 2000, Richard was one among some of the first Hollywood composers to delve into scoring Video Games some of which included Stonekeep, Casper, Waterworld, Star Trek:Judgment Rights, Descent under Mountain, Invictus: In the Shadow of Olympus and Clayfighter.
During this period Band continued to score various TV family films and comedies for Paramount such as In the Dog House (2001) My Horrible Year (2002) and Robo-Warriors while still scoring eccentric thrillers for his brother, including Head of the Family (1996), Unlucky Charms (2013), Trophy Heads (2015) and more recently Ravenwolf Towers (2016), a web series for Amazon.
More recently Richard scored the horror/comedy Exorcism@60,000 Feet (2019), Necropolis: Legend and The Deep ones (2020) for director Chad Ferrin.
Now with over 50 soundtracks to his credit, Richard Band's prolific and stylistic work has made him not only one of the most distinctive composers in the realms of horror and science fiction but arguably include comedy, family films and animation. Band's full-blooded talent remains vibrant to this day.- Music Department
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John Barry was born in York, England in 1933, and was the youngest of three children. His father, Jack, owned several local cinemas and by the age of fourteen, Barry was capable of running the projection box on his own - in particular, The Rialto in York. As he was brought up in a cinematic environment, he soon began to assimilate the music which accompanied the films he saw nightly to a point when, even before he'd left St. Peters school, he had decided to become a film music composer. Helped by lessons provided locally on piano and trumpet, followed by the more exacting theory taught by tutors as diverse as Dr Francis Jackson of York Minster and William Russo, formerly arranger to Stan Kenton and His Orchestra, he soon became equipped to embark upon his chosen career, but had no knowledge of how one actually got a start in the business. A three year sojourn in the army as a bandsman combined with his evening stints with local jazz bands gave him the idea to ease this passage by forming a small band of his own. This was how The John Barry Seven came into existence, and Barry successfully launched them during 1957 via a succession of tours and TV appearances. A recording contract with EMI soon followed, and although initial releases made by them failed to chart, Barry's undoubted talent showed enough promise to influence the studio management at Abbey Road in allowing him to make his debut as an arranger and conductor for other artists on the EMI roster.
A chance meeting with a young singer named Adam Faith, whilst both were appearing on astage show version of the innovative BBC TV programme, Six-Five Special (1957), led Barry to recommend Faith for a later BBC TV series, Drumbeat (1959), which was broadcast in 1959. Faith had made two or three commercially unsuccessful records before singer/songwriter Johnny Worth, also appearing on Drumbeat, offered him a song he'd just finished entitled What Do You Want? With the assistance of the JB7 pianist, Les Reed, Barry contrived an arrangement considered suited to Faith's soft vocal delivery, and within weeks, the record was number one. Barry (and Faith) then went from strength to strength; Faith achieving a swift succession of chart hits, with Barry joining him soon afterwards when the Seven, riding high on the wave of the early sixties instrumental boom, scored with Hit & Miss, Walk Don't Run and Black Stockings.
Faith had long harboured ambitions to act even before his first hit record and was offered a part in the up and coming British movie, Wild for Kicks (1960), at that time. As Barry was by then arranging not only his recordings but also his live Drumbeat material, it came as no surprise when the film company asked him to write the score to accompany Faith's big screen debut. It should be emphasised that the film was hardly a cinematic masterpiece. However, it did give Faith a chance to demonstrate his acting potential, and Barry the chance to show just how quickly he'd mastered the technique of film music writing. Although the film and soundtrack album were both commercial successes, further film score offers failed to flood in. On those that did, such as Never Let Go (1960) and The Amorous Mr. Prawn (1962), Barry proved highly inventive, diverse and adaptable and, as a result, built up a reputation as an emerging talent. It was with this in mind that Noel Rogers, of United Artists Music, approached him in the summer of '62, with a view to involving him in the music for the forthcoming James Bond film, Dr. No (1962).
He was also assisted onto the cinematic ladder as a result of a burgeoning relationship with actor/writer turned director Bryan Forbes, who asked him to write a couple of jazz numbers for use in a club scene in Forbes' then latest film, The L-Shaped Room (1962). From this very modest beginning, the couple went on to collaborate on five subsequent films, including the highly acclaimed Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), King Rat (1965) and The Whisperers (1967). Other highlights from the sixties included five more Bond films, Zulu (1964), Born Free (1966) (a double Oscar), The Lion in Winter (1968) (another Oscar) and Midnight Cowboy (1969).
In the seventies he scored the cult film Walkabout (1971), The Last Valley (1971), Mary, Queen of Scots (1971) (Oscar nomination), wrote the theme for The Persuaders! (1971), a musical version of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and the hit musical Billy. Then, in 1974, he made the decision to leave his Thameside penthouse apartment for the peace of a remote villa he was having built in Majorca. He had been living there for about a year, during which time he turned down all film scoring opportunities, until he received an invitation to write the score for the American TV movie, Eleanor and Franklin (1976). In order to accomplish the task, he booked into the Beverly Hills Hotel for six weeks in October 1975. However, during this period, he was also offered Robin and Marian (1976) and King Kong (1976), which caused his stay to be extended. He was eventually to live and work in the hotel for almost a year, as more assignments were offered and accepted. His stay on America's West Coast eventually lasted almost five years, during which time he met and married his wife, Laurie, who lived with him at his Beverly Hills residence. They moved to Oyster Bay, New York and have since split their time between there and a house in Cadogan Square, London.
After adopting a seemingly lower profile towards the end of the seventies, largely due to the relatively obscure nature of the commissions he accepted, the eighties saw John Barry re-emerge once more into the cinematic limelight. This was achieved, not only by continuing to experiment and diversify, but also by mixing larger budget commissions of the calibre of Body Heat (1981), Jagged Edge (1985), Out of Africa (1985) (another Oscar) and The Cotton Club (1984) with smaller ones such as the TV movies, Touched by Love (1980) and Svengali (1983). Other successes included: Somewhere in Time (1980), Frances (1982), three more Bond films, and Peggy Sue Got Married (1986).
After serious illness in the late eighties, Barry returned with yet another Oscar success with Dances with Wolves (1990) and was also nominated for Chaplin (1992). Since then he scored the controversial Indecent Proposal (1993), My Life (1993), Deception (1992), Cry, the Beloved Country (1995) and has made compilation albums for Sony (Moviola and Moviola II) and non-soundtrack albums for Decca ('The Beyondness Of Things' & 'Eternal Echoes').
In the late nineties he made a staggeringly successful return to the concert arena, playing to sell-out audiences at the Royal Albert Hall. Since then he has appeared as a guest conductor at a RAH concert celebrating the life and career of Elizabeth Taylor and made brief appearances at a couple of London concerts dedicated to his music. In 2004 he re-united with Don Black to write his fifth stage musical, Brighton Rock, which enjoyed a limited run at The Almeida Theatre in London.
He continued to appear at concerts of his own music, often making brief appearances at the podium. In November 2007, Christine Albanel, the French Minister for Culture, appointed him Commander in the National Order of Arts and Letters. The award was made at the eighth International Festival Music and Cinema, in Auxerre, France, when, in his honour, a concert of his music also took place.
In August 2008 he was working on a new album, provisionally entitled Seasons, which he has described as "a soundtrack of his life." A new biography, "John Barry: The Man with The Midas Touch", by Geoff Leonard, Pete Walker, and Gareth Bramley, was published in November 2008.
He died following a heart-attack on 30th January 2011, at his home in Oyster Bay, New York.- Composer
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Marco Beltrami was born on 7 October 1966 in New York City, New York, USA. He is a composer and producer, known for I, Robot (2004), World War Z (2013) and Knowing (2009).- Music Department
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Elmer Bernstein was educated at the Walden School and New York University. He served in the US Army Air Corps in World War II, writing scores for the service radio unit. He also wrote and arranged musical numbers for Glenn Miller's Army Air Force Band. A prolific and respected film music composer, he was a protégé of Aaron Copland, who studied music with Roger Sessions and Stefan Wolpe. Bernstein worked in various artistic endeavors, including painting and the theatre and also performed as an actor and dancer. Among his early composition work were scores for United Nations radio programs and television and industrial documentaries. His original scores for films range over an enormous variety of styles, with his groundbreaking jazz score for The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), light musical comedies such as his Oscar-winning Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) score, and perhaps his most familiar score, for the western The Magnificent Seven (1960). Between 1963 and 1969, Bernstein served as vice president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
A few years before before his death, he acquired something of a cult status among fans of English football when his familiar main theme for The Great Escape (1963) was adopted by them and hummed and played, lustily, during matches.- Composer
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A world renowned trumpeter/composer/band leader and Blue Note recording artist, Terence Blanchard is the most prolific jazz musician to ever compose for motion pictures. Blanchard was born and raised in New Orleans where he studied with the Marsalis brothers at the famed New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts. In 1980, he won a scholarship to Rutgers University and immediately began performing in the Lionel Hampton Orchestra. Two years later, he succeeded Wynton Marsalis in the legendary Jazz Messengers before forming his own influential groups. Blanchard originally began performing on Spike Lee's soundtracks, including "Mo Better Blues" in which he ghosted the trumpet for Denzel Washington. Blanchard lives in New Orleans with his wife, Robin, and his four children.- Music Department
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Bruce Broughton composes in almost every medium, from theatrical motion pictures and television to computer games, in styles ranging from large symphonic settings ("Silverado") to contemporary electronic scores (the recently Emmy-nominated "The Dive from Clausen's Pier"). Broughton has written the scores for such major motion pictures as "Tombstone," "Lost In Space," "Young Sherlock Holmes" and "Bambi II." With 23 nominations, he has received the Emmy award a record ten times, most recently for his score to the HBO movie, "Warm Springs." His television credits include the main title themes for "Jag" and Steven Spielberg's "Tiny Toon Adventures," as well as the scores for countless television series ("Dallas," "Quincy," "Hawaii Five-O") and movies and mini-series ("The Blue and the Gray," True Women"). His score for "Heart of Darkness" was the first orchestral score composed for a CD-ROM game. Broughton's concert music includes numerous works for orchestra and chamber groups, which have been performed by ensembles such as the Cleveland Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. He is a governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a board member of ASCAP and a past president of The Society of Composers and Lyricists. He has lectured in music composition at UCLA and has taught film composition in the Advanced Film Music Studies program at USC.- Composer
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Carter Burwell was born on 18 November 1954 in New York City, New York, USA. He is a composer and actor, known for Carol (2015), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) and The Banshees of Inisherin (2022). He has been married to Christine Sciulli since 1999.- Music Department
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John Howard Carpenter was born in Carthage, New York, to mother Milton Jean (Carter) and father Howard Ralph Carpenter. His family moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where his father, a professor, was head of the music department at Western Kentucky University. He attended Western Kentucky University and then USC film school in Los Angeles. He began making short films in 1962, and won an Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short Subject in 1970, for The Resurrection of Broncho Billy (1970), which he made while at USC. Carpenter formed a band in the mid-1970s called The Coupe de Villes, which included future directors Tommy Lee Wallace and Nick Castle. Since the 1970s, he has had numerous roles in the film industry including writer, actor, composer, producer, and director. After directing Dark Star (1974), he has helmed both classic horror films like Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), and The Thing (1982), and noted sci-fi tales like Escape from New York (1981) and Starman (1984).- Music Department
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Bill Conti was born on 13 April 1942 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. He is a composer and actor, known for For Your Eyes Only (1981), Rocky (1976) and The Karate Kid Part II (1986). He is married to Shelby Cox. They have two children.- Composer
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Bruno Coulais was born on 13 January 1954 in Paris, France. He is a composer and actor, known for The Chorus (2004), Wolfwalkers (2020) and Coraline (2009).- Composer
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Composer and conductor Alexandre Desplat, Oscar winner and seven-time Academy Award nominated, for his prolific filmography and his collaborations with Stephen Frears, Terrence Malick, Ang Lee, Kathryn Bigelow, Jacques Audiard, Wes Anderson, Roman Polanski, George Clooney or Matteo Garrone is one of the most worthy heirs of the French masters of film music.
Brought up in a cultural and musical mix thanks to his Greek mother and his French father who studied and got married in California, he grew up listening to French symphonists, Ravel or Debussy , world music and jazz.
He studied piano and trumpet before choosing the flute as the main instrument. As a free auditor in Claude Ballif's analysis class at the CNSM, he enriches his classical musical education by studying Brazilian and African music. He will record later with Carlinhos Brown or Ray Lema.
Passionate about film music, it's as much his musical sensitivity as his intimate approach to cinematographic language that will allow his privileged relationship with filmmakers. Inspired by the scores of Maurice Jarre, Bernard Herrmann, Nino Rota or Georges Delerue, it is after hearing the score of John Williams for Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) that he decides to compose exclusively for the big screen.
During the recording of his first feature film he meets violinist Dominique Lemonnier. This is the beginning of an exceptional artistic exchange as she becomes her favorite soloist, artistic director and wife. With his strong sense of interpretation, his creative spirit and his singular violin playing, Solré inspired Alexandre's compositions, influencing his music in depth, initiating a new way of writing for the strings in the cinema.
Collaborator of Jacques Audiard since his first film, he creates for his works strong and singular compositions and he won in 2005 for The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005) the Silver Bear of the Berlinale, and his first Caesar. He works in France with Philippe de Broca and Francis Girod but Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) of Peter Webber, his 50th score for the film, he gets a first Golden Globe nomination and BAFTA and began his rise in Hollywood. Leading American career and European collaborations and remaining faithful to his directors, he composes among others Syriana (2005)'s scores of Stephen Gaghan, Birth (2004) of Jonathan Glazer, Coco Before Chanel (2009) by Anne Fontaine, Army of Crime (2009) by Robert Guédiguian, The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch (2008) by Jérôme Salle, Intimate Enemies (2007) or Hostage (2005) by Florent-Emilio Siri.
Prizes and collaborations with the greatest directors follow one another. In 2007, he received his first Oscar nomination for Stephen Frears's The Queen (2006) and won his first European Film Award. The same year, he won the Golden Globe, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, and the World Soundtrack Award for John Curran's score The Painted Veil (2006), performed by pianist Láng Lang. He composed in 2008 for Lust, Caution (2007) by Ang Lee and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) by David Fincher which will earn him a second Oscar nomination and a fourth Golden Globes and BAFTA nomination.
With his score for The Ghost Writer (2010) by Roman Polanski, he won in 2010 a second César and a second European Film Award. The same year he wrote the music of The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) by Chris Weitz, whose album was a platinum record, and Tom Hooper's The King's Speech (2010) for which he won the BAFTA, the Grammy Award, and was nominated for the fourth time at the Oscars and for the fifth time at the Golden Globes.
In 2010-2011 he wrote the music of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011) which became the third greatest success of all time. He composed in 2011 nine partitions, The Tree of Life (2011) of Terrence Malick, Carnage (2011) by Roman Polanski, Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) by George Clooney , which earned him another Oscar nomination, The Well-Digger's Daughter (2011) by Daniel Auteuil and The Ides of March (2011) by George Clooney.
In 2012 he worked with Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Matteo Garrone for Reality (2012), Gilles Bourdos for Renoir (2012), Jérôme Salle for Zulu (2013), George Clooney for Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and Jacques Audiard for Rust and Bone (2012) for which he won a third Cesar. For his score of Argo (2012) of Ben Affleck, Oscar for Best Picture, it is named for the sixth time BAFTA, and for the fifth time at the Golden Globes and the Oscars.
He signed in 2013 the partition The Monuments Men (2014) from George Clooney, Venus in Fur (2013) of Roman Polanski, and was appointed to the BAFTAs and the Oscars for Philomena (2013) of Stephen Frears.
In 2014 he composed the music Godzilla (2014) of Gareth Edwards, and receives exceptional fact, two Oscar nominations for The Imitation Game (2014) of Morten Tyldum and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) by George Clooney, for which he won a BAFTA, Grammy and Oscar.
Member of the jury of the Cannes Film Festival in 2012, he became in 2014 the first composer President of the jury of the Venice Film Festival. Crowning long years of collaboration, he directed the London Symphony Orchestra in December 2014 for a concert of his works at the Barbican Theater in London.
In 2018, Alexandre Desplat received a second Oscar, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for The Shape of Water (2017) of Guillermo del Toro.- Composer
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Born in Burano (Venice) in 1941, Pino Donaggio studied violin at the Conservatory of Venice and Milan.
After a period of adolescent performer of classical music with the Solisti Veneti and the Soloists of Milan, in 1959 he began to devote himself to the pop music that soon led to international success.
He has participated in ten editions of the Sanremo Festival getting a 3rd place in 1963 with the song "Giovane giovane" and a 4th place in 1966 with the song "Una casa in cima al mondo". His best-known song and performed is 1965 "Io che non vivo (senza te)" starring, among others, also by Elvis Presley.
Since 1973, Donaggio began gradually to abandon pop music to devote himself to composing music for films. In over forty years of activity it has put together more than two hundred soundtracks for the big and small screen, both in Italy and abroad.
He lives and works in Venice.- Composer
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Patrick Doyle is a classically trained composer.
His first film score, the acclaimed adaptation of "Henry V" with Kenneth Branagh for Renaissance films was scored in 1989. He has subsequently worked with Kenneth Branagh, a long time collaborator on numerous pictures including "Dead Again", "Much Ado About Nothing", "Frankenstein" and "Hamlet".
Patrick has composed over 45 internationally renowned feature film scores including "Indochine", "Sense and Sensibility", "Carlito's Way", "Gosford Park", "A Little Princess", "Bridget Jones's Diary", "Nanny McPhee" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire".
He has collaborated with a host of internationally acclaimed film directors including Robert Altman, Ang Lee, Brian de Palma, Alfonso Cuaron, Mike Newell, Regis Wagnier and Kenneth Branagh.
His concert works include "The Thistle and The Rose", a commission by HRH The Prince of Wales for full choir in honour of the Queen Mother's 90th birthday, "Tam O' Shanter" for the National Schools Orchestra Trust and the violin concerto "Corarsik".
He has recently completed the score for the Marvel Entertainment feature film "Thor," directed by Kenneth Branagh, "La Ligne Droite" for Regis Wagnier and the Twentieth Century Fox film "Caesar Rise of the Apes". He is currently scoring the upcoming Pixar film "Brave" directed by Mark Andrews and after which will score the Sovereign Films film "Effie" directed by Richard Laxton.- Composer
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Cliff Eidelman's breakthrough came with his score Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), a powerful score that elicited a great deal of attention and acclaim. By the age of 24, Eidelman had composed a number of epic symphonic scores including the Holocaust drama Triumph of the Spirit (1989) and Christopher Columbus (1992). Soon after the release of Triumph of the Spirit, legendary composer Jerry Goldsmith took a real interest in Eidelman's career. In an interview in 1999, he commented "Cliff Eidelman is a great talent with amazing potential."
Throughout his career, Eidelman honed different musical approaches from intimate, heartfelt story telling to playful comedies to sweeping large scale orchestral scores. Some of his film scores include: Crazy People (1990), Delirious (1990), Untamed Heart (1992), Leap of Faith (1992), A Simple Twist of Fate (1994), Now and Then (1995), the highest rated HBO film If These Walls Could Talk (1996), One True Thing (1998), Witness Protection (1999), An American Rhapsody (2001), the IMAX film Ocean Men (2001), Harrison's Flowers (2001), Sexual Life (2004), The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants (2005), Open Window (2006), He's Just Not That Into You (2009), Big Miracle (2012), Being Dolphin (2018) and The 100% (2019) winner of "Best VR Film" at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Concert Works
In parallel to his film music, Eidelman has composed many concert works. Symphony for Orchestra and Two Pianos recorded at Abbey Road Studios with the London Symphony Orchestra (under the direction of Eidelman), Night in the Gallery recorded by Members of the London Symphony Orchestra, a symphonic tone poem The Tempest, recorded by The Royal Scottish National Orchestra (under the direction of Eidelman) and Wedding In The Night Garden, originally orchestrated for strings and mezzo-soprano, subsequently developed by Eidelman as a second version for strings, choir and mezzo-soprano which was performed in 2002 by the Los Angeles Master Chorale. It was so well received that conductor Grant Gershon requested repeat performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall in their 2005/2006 season.
Recent works include Bridges, a solo piano piece commissioned by the Library of Congress for pianist Jenny Lin and The Five Tales, recorded by acclaimed concert pianist, Michael McHale.
My Muse is a collection of 10 songs Eidelman wrote over the course of a decade. The music and lyrics are written and performed by Eidelman.
Background
One of the few Los Angeles-born composers, Eidelman began his formal musical training at the age of 8, studying the violin. A few years later he switched to guitar as his main instrument and began performing and writing songs for his various bands, playing at local Los Angeles clubs before age 14. He studied Jazz guitar at the Guitar Institute of Technology before attending USC studying composition. Eidelman broke into film scoring at the age of 22 when a performance recording of one of the two concert music commissions, the ballet Once Upon a Ruler and Celebration Symphony Overture he composed while a student Santa Monica City College reached director Monica Teuber. She was so impressed that she asked him to write some music based on the reading of her script. Eidelman composed eleven pieces and recorded the music at his home studio while still a student of music composition at the University of Southern California. Teuber hired him to write his first film score, Magdalene (1988), which starred Nastassja Kinski. The young composer took full advantage of this opportunity, launching his career with a huge 75 minute score. At only 22 years of age, Eidelman conducted the Munich Symphony using a 110 piece orchestra, 60 piece choir and 30 piece children's choir.
When director Richard Pearce heard the Magdalene score playing one morning on KCRW, he had his producers call Eidelman, that afternoon, to offer him the HBO film Dead Man Out (1988) which earned him a nomination for an Ace award. Within a year of completing his first film score he was approached by director Robert Young to score his epic drama of WWII, Triumph of the Spirit. It was 1989 and Eidelman was just 24. The score was impressive and deeply moving, dramatically capturing the story of survival against all odds in a German concentration camp. So much so that it has caught the attention of many conductors since its composition and been performed by numerous orchestras. Eidelman created a suite from the score that was performed in June 2003 by The Los Angeles Master Chorale under the direction of Grant Gershon for their final concert at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion prior to moving to Disney Hall.
Although he is known foremost as a composer, Eidelman has conducted all of his film scores. He has conducted The Metropolitan Orchestra of London, The Munich Symphony and Chorus, Unione Musicisti Di Roma and Chorus, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, The Royal Scottish National Orchestra, The Toronto Symphony Orchestra, The Seattle Symphony Orchestra and many first call pick up orchestras for his film scores. The recognition he garnered prompted Varese Sarabande Records to pursue Eidelman for conducting projects. On two recordings, he conducted works by Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Walton, Rozsa and Rota.
As one of the youngest composers to score a feature film, Eidelman has amassed an impressive body of work from film to the concert hall. He has created symphonic scores, musically captured the epic proportions of faith and despair, the whimsies of comic entertainment, and the intimacies of the human heart with a lone guitar, a one hundred piece orchestra, a solo piano and every formation in-between. Experience has given him an ease and maturity that allows his creativity to find the musical heart and vocabulary of intimate and epic films, as well as concert pieces and songs.- Music Department
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As Danny Elfman was growing up in the Los Angeles area, he was largely unaware of his talent for composing. It wasn't until the early 1970s that Danny and his older brother Richard Elfman started a musical troupe while in Paris; the group "Mystic Knights of Oingo-Boingo" was created for Richard's directorial debut, Forbidden Zone (1980) (now considered a cult classic by Elfman fans). The group's name went through many incarnations over the years, beginning with "The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo" and eventually just Oingo Boingo. While continuing to compose eclectic, intelligent rock music for his L.A.-based band (some of which had been used in various film soundtracks, e.g. Weird Science (1985)), Danny formed a friendship with young director Tim Burton, who was then a fan of Oingo Boingo. Danny went on to score the soundtrack of Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985), Danny's first orchestral film score. The Elfman-Burton partnership continued (most notably through the hugely-successful "Batman" flicks) and opened doors of opportunity for Danny, who has been referred to as "Hollywood's hottest film composer".- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
George Fenton was born on 19 October 1949 in Bromley, Kent, England, UK. He is a composer and actor, known for Groundhog Day (1993), Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998) and The Bounty Hunter (2010).- Composer
- Music Department
- Producer
Robert Folk is a graduate and former faculty member of the famed Juilliard School in New York City. Since completing his Doctorate, Mr. Folk has composed and conducted the musical scores for over 95 feature films. His extensive credits include Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995), Nothing To Lose (1997), Tremors (1990), The Neverending Story II: The Next Chapter (1990), Toy Soldiers (1991), Police Academy (1984), Kung Pow: Enter the Fist (2002), Boat Trip (2002), Back in The Day (2005), American Pie Presents Band Camp (2005), Van Wilder 2 (2006), Vivaldi (2008), There Be Dragons (2011), Elephant White (2011), Underground (2011), The Secret Village (2013) and Silent Life (2014). Mr. Folk has also composed and conducted numerous concert works including Symphonic, Vocal and Chamber music compositions. His Ballet "To Dream Of Roses," composed for the Osaka Worlds Fair, was recorded by London Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Folk is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, and the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers. He is a prolific songwriter & producer, and has conducted many prominent orchestras including; The London Symphony Orchestra, The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, The Berlin Radio Orchestra, The Munich Symphony, The Dublin Symphony Orchestra, The Moscow Symphony Orchestra, and the London Sinfonia.- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Born in the Bronx, 1940. Graduated High School of Music & Art in New York, then studied composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.
Before moving to Hollywood, wrote and played Latin music for Salsa legends including Tito Puente, Ray Baretto and Joe Quijano.
In addition to composing over 100 movie scores (including Barbarella and 9-5) and TV themes (Happy Days & Love Boat), Fox wrote the music for many popular songs including "Killing Me Softly With His Song" (Grammy/Roberta Flack-Fugees), "I Got A Name" (Jim Croce), Richard's Window (Olivia Newton John/Oscar Nomination) & "Ready To Take A Chance Again" (Oscar Nomination/Barry Manilow).
Classical compositions include 3 full length ballets: "Song For Dead Warriors" (San Franciso Ballet Company, 1979) , "Zorro" (Smuin Ballet, 2003) and "Salsa Til Dawn" (Smuin ballet 2024). Other larger classical works include: "Lament & Prayer" (Warsaw Opera House/2008), "Fantasie-Homage To Chopin" (Gdansk, Poland/Chopin Festival 2010) and "Clarinet Quintet" (Santa Fe Opera House / 2015).
In addition to winning 2 Emmys, a Grammy & 2 Oscar Nominations, he was given BMI's Richard Kirk Career Achievement Award in 1992 and inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame in 2004. Fox served as a Board of Governor for the Academy's music branch from 2008-2016, and was re-elected in 2022. Charles will receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame April 2024.
Charles' memoirs "Killing Me Softly: My Life In Music", chronicling his composing career and centering on his 3 years studying with Nadia Boulanger, was released by Scarecrow Press in the Fall of 2010.
In 2019, for HBO's documentary "The Bronx, USA", Fox & Paul Williams wrote the title song called "Da' Bronx" which is sung live on the Bronx streets by Robert Klein and Hamilton star Donald Webber Jr. They were nominated for a Hollywood Music Media Award.
Fox has recently returned to his early roots of Latin music-- with a series of concerts in Havana, all original Cuban music, which are featured in a new documentary called Killing Me Softly with His Songs (2022), directed by Danny Gold.
The documentary chronicles Fox's 60 year journey writing music and will be released on Apple and other streaming devices April 2024.- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Michael Giacchino is an American composer of music for films, television and video games.
Giacchino composed the scores to the television series Lost, Alias and Fringe, the video game series Medal of Honor and Call of Duty and many films such as The Incredibles (2004), Star Trek (2009), Up (2009), Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), Jurassic World (2015), Inside Out (2015), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) and Coco (2017).
For his work on Up he earned an Academy Award for Best Original Score.- Composer
- Music Department
- Writer
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Glass worked in his father's radio store and discovered music listening to the offbeat Western classical records customers didn't seem to want. He studied the violin and flute, and obtained early admission to the University of Chicago. After graduating in mathematics and philosophy, he went to New York's Juilliard school, drove a cab, and studied composition with Darius Milhaud and others.
At 23, he moved to Paris to study under the legendary Nadia Boulanger, who taught almost all of the major Western classical composers of the 20th century. While there, he discovered Indian classical music while transcribing the works of Ravi Shankar into Western musical notation for a French filmmaker. A creative turning point, Glass researched non-Western music in India and parts of Africa, and applied the techniques to his own composition.
Back in the United States, Glass spent the late 1960s and early 1970s driving a taxi cab in New York and creating a major collection of new music. In 1976, his landmark opera "Einstein on the Beach" was staged by Robert Wilson to a baffling variety of reviews. His compositions were so avant-garde that he had to form the Philip Glass Ensemble to give them a venue for performance. Although called a minimalist by the Western classical mainstream, he denies this categorization. His major works include opera, theater pieces, dance, and song.
His work in film, beginning with Koyaanisqatsi (1982), gave filmmakers such as Godfrey Reggio and Errol Morris a new venue of expression through the documentary form. His many recordings have also widened his audience. He was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera to compose "The Voyage" for the Columbus quinquacentennial in 1992. In 1996, he composed original music for the Atlanta Olympic Games, which, perhaps, made Glass almost mainstream. Glass remains one of the most important American composers. His music is distinctive, haunting, and evocative. Either performed by itself or in collaboration with other media, his compositions move the listener to unexplored places. More recently, a major reexamination of Glass's oeuvre has led him to be labeled the Last Romantic by the musical press.- Music Department
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- Director
Elliot Goldenthal is an Academy Award-winning composer best known for his original music scores for such films as Frida (2002) and Across the Universe (2007), among his other works.
He was born on May 2, 1954, in Brooklyn, New York. His father was a house-painter, and his mother was a seamstress. Young Goldenthal was fond of music and theatre, he played with his school rock band during the 1960s. In 1968, he staged his first ballet at John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, from which he graduated in 1971. He attended the Manhattan School of Music, studied under Aaron Copland and John Corigliano, and earned his MA in composition.
Among Goldenthal's most notable works are his original music scores for numerous films, such as Julie Taymor's Frida (2002), Clark Johnson's S.W.A.T. (2003), Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997). Goldenthal also has been collaborating with director Neil Jordan on five films, among those are Michael Collins (1996), and Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), for which he earned two Oscar nominations.
Since the early 1980s, Elliot Goldenthal has been working together with Julie Taymor. Their partnership in film and in life has been one of the most rewarding in film business; the couple made such acclaimed films as Titus (1999), Frida (2002) and Across the Universe (2007), among their other works, earning numerous awards and nominations for their highly innovative creativity.- Music Department
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Born on February 10, 1929, Jerry Goldsmith studied piano with Jakob Gimpel and composition, theory, and counterpoint with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. He also attended classes in film composition given by Miklós Rózsa at the Univeristy of Southern California. In 1950, he was employed as a clerk typist in the music department at CBS. There, he was given his first embryonic assignments as a composer for radio shows such as "Romance" and "CBS Radio Workshop". He wrote one score a week for these shows, which were performed live on transmission. He stayed with CBS until 1960, having already scored The Twilight Zone (1959). He was hired by Revue Studios to score their series Thriller (1960). It was here that he met the influential film composer Alfred Newman who hired Goldsmith to score the film Lonely Are the Brave (1962), his first major feature film score. An experimentalist, Goldsmith constantly pushed forward the bounds of film music: Planet of the Apes (1968) included horns blown without mouthpieces and a bass clarinetist fingering the notes but not blowing. He was unafraid to use the wide variety of electronic sounds and instruments which had become available, although he did not use them for their own sake.
He rose rapidly to the top of his profession in the early to mid-1960s, with scores such as Freud (1962), A Patch of Blue (1965) and The Sand Pebbles (1966). In fact, he received Oscar nominations for all three and another in the 1960s for Planet of the Apes (1968). From then onwards, his career and reputation was secure and he scored an astonishing variety of films during the next 30 years or so, from Patton (1970) to Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and from Chinatown (1974) to The Boys from Brazil (1978). He received 17 Oscar nominations but won only once, for The Omen (1976) in 1977 (Goldsmith himself dismissed the thought of even getting a nomination for work on a "horror show"). He enjoyed giving concerts of his music and performed all over the world, notably in London, where he built up a strong relationship with London Symphony Orchestra.
Jerry Goldsmith died at age 75 on July 21, 2004 after a long battle with cancer.- Composer
- Music Department
- Camera and Electrical Department
Goodman attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. (There is now a scholarship there bearing his name.) At Antioch, he was an English major. Goodman studied Shakespeare in London and originally desired to be a director. He studied with private music teachers including Albert Harris and instead became involved in composing music and producing albums.- Music Department
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Ron Goodwin was born on 17th February 1925 in Plymouth. He was the son of a London policeman who was detached to the harbour-town. His mother felt that piano lessons would be a good pastime, so in his fifth year, the little Ron was hoisted onto a piano-stool and his education on this instrument began. Ron himself was at that time not really convinced about that parental ambition.
In 1934 his father's detachment ended and the family moved back to London. Ron went for his elementary education to the Willesden County Grammar school, situated in the North-West of London. In the school an orchestra was set-up and Ron got slowly attracted by music. It fascinated him, that all these young people were playing different instruments but that the result was very harmonious.
When he was 11, he went to his teacher and asked for a place in the orchestra. His teacher replied: "We don't have enough trumpet players. Learn how to play the trumpet and we'll see". That's what they call "Hobson's Choice". And so he learned to play the trumpet. Ready after just a few lessons, Ron joined the school orchestra. He kept continuing with his trumpet lessons because he felt that there was more prosperity in a career as a trumpet player than as a pianist. Moreover he had more fun in playing the trumpet. Nevertheless he also continued his piano lessons. The piano has always been a very useful instrument for him, when writing music. But frankly, he never became a virtuoso pianist. He was a much better trumpet player.
The end of the '30s was the era of swing with the great big bands of Glen Miller, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey and Woody Herman. In 1939, at the age of just 14, he formed his own dance band called "The Woodchoppers". Very soon the orchestra got some engagements here and there. The signature tune for their performances was "At the Woodchoppers Ball", a swinging Woody Herman composition. That explains the name "The Woodchoppers". The band was very soon semi-professional and very regularly entered competitions for dance bands.
After he had studied harmony and counterpoint, he left school in 1942. In deference to his mother's doubts about the security status and prospects of music as a career, he took a job as junior clerk in an insurance office. He held the job for three months. After repeatedly catching him fixing gigs for "The Woodchoppers" over the office 'phone, Ron's boss advised him to forget insurance and take his chances in music. He still thinks that this is the best advice ever given to him.
He started as a copyist for the music publisher Campbell Connelly. There he got the opportunity to work with and learn from Harry G. Stafford. This was an elderly thoroughly experienced arranger, who had arranged the music of Hubert Bath for Hitchcock's first English sound film Blackmail (1929) in 1929. Stafford taught him all the methods for producing arrangements and how to lay out a score. In that period he also studied a private course on how to conduct an orchestra with Siegfried de Chabot, a teacher at the Royal Music College.
After a few months working for Campbell Connelly, he applied for a job as an arranger for Norrie Paramor and Harry Gold. They were joint-proprietors of "The Paramor-Gold Orchestral Services" and they also had a jazz orchestra called "The Pieces of Eight". He was hired, although he thinks that it was not only because of his skills as an arranger. In that jazz orchestra there used to be an excellent trumpet player called Cyril Ellis. He was drafted for the Navy and so Paramor and Gold lacked a musician. Goodwin, being a trumpet player, replaced Cyril in the orchestra and was also the arranger of the "Paramor-Gold Orchestral Services".
As an arranger he was particularly working for a BBC program called "Composers Cavalcade". Every week a different well-known composer of light music, like Albert Ketelby, Noël Coward or Ivor Novello was chosen. Goodwin provided all the arrangements for these weekly broadcasts and he got a lot of experience through it. In the meantime his band, "The Woodchoppers", won several Dance Band competitions and in 1945 came fifth in the All Britain Dance Band Championship.
After the contract with Norrie Paramor ended, he started working for the music-publisher Edward Kassner. Here he arranged the music for various types of orchestras. One day a pub or dance orchestra, the other day for BBC radio orchestras. In the meantime he also did the orchestrations for well-know orchestra leaders like Stanley Black, Ted Heath, Geraldo, Peter Yorke and Ambrose.
In 1949 he started working for Polygon. In those days the record market was dominated by two giants: Decca and EMI. Polygon was the brainchild of Alan Freeman (not to be confused with the D.J. of the same name). He also continued working or the Kassner Music Company as a manager/publisher and he was determined to fulfil his greatest wish - making records. He already had some contacts in Australia who wanted pop records and he decided to have these sung by Petula Clark. Petula was born on 15 November 1932 as Sally Clark. From her seventh year she had been singing regularly and had become a popular child-star through her radio performances during World War II. In 1944, when she was 11, she signed a film contract for the Rank Organisation. Despite her popularity neither Decca nor EMI were willing to give her a contract. Alan Freeman approached Leslie Clark, Petula's father who was also her manager. Leslie Clark took up the opportunity, invested also some money and Polygon was born.
At the end of 1949 the first recording session took place. That day four titles were recorded: "You go to My Head", "Out of a Clear Blue Sky", "Music! Music! Music!" ("Put Another Nickel in...") and "Blossoms on the Bough", featuring Petula Clark and the Stargazers with accompaniment conducted by Ron Goodwin. He was then just 24 years old. The 2 records were released in Australia and became a big success there. In 1950 "Too Young" was recorded, a cover version of Nat King Cole's USA no. 1 hit, sung by the then completely unknown singer/pianist, Jimmy Young, with accompaniment conducted by Ron Goodwin. The record became a big hit and gave a huge impulse to the careers of both Jimmy Young and Ron Goodwin. After that, Ron also recorded his first two instrumental records.
Polygon was not able to handle the enormous success of Jimmy Young and by the end of 1952 he moved to Decca. Ron Goodwin already had his contract with Parlophone, but on the Decca label he conducted fifteen Jimmy Young records. Ron Goodwin was still very young and the producer Dickie Rowe called him Ronnie Goodwin on the first of those Decca records. It did not go so well with Polygon after that. The company was not able to make up for the loss of Jimmy Young. Petula proved to be their only continuing asset and in 1955 Polygon was amalgamated with (Pye) Nixa.
In the slipstream of the success of "Too Young" Ron Goodwin was from then on an established name in the British musical world, performing under the name: "Ron Goodwin and his Orchestra" or depending on the mood of the person in charge of the marketing: "Ron Goodwin and his Concert Orchestra". The orchestra he formed consisted at first of 36 persons but later it grew to 42. All of them were session musicians personally selected by him. These musicians worked for him only during the record sessions. A day later they could be working for, for instance, Mantovani or Geraldo. Indeed, the Mantovani orchestra was also comprised entirely of session musicians.
In 1951 Ron Goodwin met George Martin, who was at that time a young assistant recording manager at Parlophone. George offered him a contract of backings for 12 vocal singles and 6 singles with his own orchestra every year. His first instrumental record on Parlophone was released in 1953. In that same year he recorded his version of Charles Chaplin's "Limelight" and reached third place in the English hit parade with it.
In the following years he made numerous records with his orchestra and did the vocal backings of, amongst others: Eamonn Andrews, Joan Baxter, Christine Campbell, Petula Clark, Jim Dale, Bruce Forsyth, Nadia Gray, The Headliners, Edmund Hockridge, Dick James, Cynthia Lanagan, Zack Laurence, Lorne Lesley, Larry Marschall, Glen Mason, Spike Milligan, Morecambe & Wise, Parlophone Pops Orchestra, Rostal & Schaefer, Edna Savage, Peter Sellers, Joan Small, Ian Wallace, Alma Warren and Jimmy Young.
Nowadays, many of those names are not familiar any more to us, but in those days you could find them regularly in the hit parades. Jim Dale started as a rock-singer, but became later a comedian and a member of the cast of the "Carry on..." films. Dick James started his own publishing company and became later the publisher of all the Beatles hits. And Edmund Hockridge? He still has his own fan club.
In 1954 Ron Goodwin recorded his first album in his own right: "Film Favourites". After that followed many more LPs, also 2 oriental: "Music for an Arabian Night" and "Holiday in Beirut". Long before he recorded "Sergeant Pepper ....." with The Beatles, George Martin was the producer of many concept-albums. A perfect example is the Goodwin album "Out of this World". On this LP the galaxy is traversed in an orchestral way (without the use of synthesisers!). Released in 1958, a few months after the first satellite "Sputnik" was put into orbit. Photos of launched rockets were not available yet, so the rocket on the front cover is a drawn one.
In 1958 the skiffle-rhythm was a rage and Goodwin wrote "Skiffling Strings". The song entered the hit parade and the American label "Capitol" was interested to release it in the USA. But the Americans were wondering what "Skiffling" really meant. In America the skiffle-rage was completely unknown. So, the song was re-titled "Swingin' Sweethearts". Ron Goodwin and George Martin went to the States to promote the single in several television-broadcasts. Within 14 days the song entered the American hit parades and was later followed by "Lingering Lovers". Quite a number of his albums were released after that in the USA. In that year he received the Ivor Novello Award" for "Lingering Lovers" as the year's best English song.
Peter Sellers was already a well-known actor in Britain, especially because of his performances in the BBC broadcasting series "The Goon Show". In 1958, 1959 and 1960 he recorded three LPs. These albums are still considered as the standard for British comedy. The production of those albums was again in the hands of George Martin. Ron Goodwin did all the conducting of the accompanying music. The third album in the series was called: "Peter and Sophia". In 1960, Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren had just finished the shooting of the film The Millionairess (1960). In this film Sellers played an Indian doctor, who was waylaid by an enamoured Sophia Loren. The co-operation of both led to this album, on which they both did the song "Goodness Gracious Me!". The song became a massive hit and remained in the top 5 for weeks. For the recording of the album Sophia Loren was flown to London with her husband Carlo Ponti, where he met Ron Goodwin. In 1965 they renewed their acquaintance when Carlo Ponti produced the film Operation Crossbow (1965) and Ron Goodwin wrote the music.
Back in 1955, Ron Goodwin was involved for the first time in composing film music. Malcolm Arnold (of "Bridge on the River Kwai" fame) had written the score for the film The Night My Number Came Up (1955). The producer wanted several sequences with dance music in night club style. Arnold refused to write this music and so Ron Goodwin was asked to write these sequences. In the following years he wrote the music for several documentaries. 1956: "The Corrington Achievement" and in 1957 "Atlantic Line". They appear to be the exercises for the larger jobs.
In 1958 he met Lawrence P. Bachmann, at that time manager for Columbia Pictures in London. Bachmann had written a book and this was going to be filmed with the title Whirlpool (1959). He commissioned Ron Goodwin to write the music for this film. That was Goodwin's first contact with a feature film. A year later Bachmann became head of production of MGM-Europe. He liked the music Goodwin wrote for his film "Whirlpool" very much and he asked him to write the music for 4 or 5 films every year. The first of those was Village of the Damned (1960), still one of the best British science fiction films. This was followed by the very successful Miss Marple film-series featuring Margaret Rutherford.
Because he was so busy writing film music, there was no more time left for vocal backings and his contract as musical-director for Parlophone was not prolonged. For the time being, the last album he recorded was "Serenade", which contained his well-known version of "Elizabethan Serenade".
Films he scored in the early sixties included: Invasion Quartet (1961), Postman's Knock (1962) (with a hilarious vocal from Spike Milligan), The Day of the Triffids (1963), Kill or Cure (1962), Follow the Boys (1963) (featuring Connie Francis) and Sword of Lancelot (1963). These were followed in 1964 by the United Artists/Mirisch Corporation film 633 Squadron (1964). This score established Ron Goodwin on the international stage as a composer of film music. The main theme became one of his most well-known and for the past several years has been used as a sort of signature tune at the start of the Rotterdam Marathon to accompany and encourage the athletes. After that film there followed even more film scores of which the most well-known are: Of Human Bondage (1964), Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes (1965), Operation Crossbow (1965), The Trap (1966) (the theme from which was adopted by the BBC for their coverage of The London Marathon), Where Eagles Dare (1968), Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies (1969), Battle of Britain (1969), Frenzy (1972) - when he replaced a score by Henry Mancini - and Force 10 from Navarone (1978).
In 1969, a very awkward situation existed with Battle of Britain (1969). Originally Sir William Walton wrote the music for this film. The producers were not really satisfied with the music and they gave the assignment to Goodwin. Sir William Walton is a kind of an institution and there was a lot of commotion about it. But Ron Goodwin was not to blame that he was signed to do the score. That Goodwin's score was apparently better, is simply proved by the fact that it was accepted by the producers. Apart, that is, from the fact that they liked Walton's "Battle in the Air" sequence more than Goodwin's and this is used in the film. These things can happen if one can choose. And so, nobody was happy with the situation, not Walton and not Goodwin.
In "Battle of Britain" it was very important that the audience could constantly identify the combatants. Ron Goodwin therefore wrote a march for the German Luftwaffe which he called, yes indeed, "Luftwaffe March". A few years later, one of the Bands of the Royal Airforce was going to record an album with marches, including "Luftwaffe March". A march with that name, recorded by an RAF Band already existed, therefore the march was re-titled "Aces High". The first editions of the soundtrack album mention the title "Luftwaffe march". On the later re-issues the new title "Aces High" was used.
In 1966 he resumed recording again for EMI, of both his own compositions and those of others. Now in the famous "Studio 2" stereo series, first came "Adventure", followed by "Gypsy Fire", "Christmas Wonderland", "Legend of the Glass Mountain", "Excitement", "Spellbound" and many others. By 1975, over a million of these albums with "Ron Goodwin and his (Concert) orchestra" had been sold and he received a gold record from EMI.
In 1979 Goodwin recorded "The Beatles Concerto". For collectors of Beatles and related records this is a very interesting LP. It was not the umpteenth album with a medley of tunes by Lennon-McCartney-Harrison, but contains a number of Beatle songs, arranged in a classical form and performed by England's most talented concert-pianists: Peter Rostal and Paul Schaefer. These were accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The record was produced by Beatles producer George Martin. Anyone who loves the great piano concertos of Rachmaninov or Tchaikovsky will be impressed by "The Beatles Concerto". The sleeve with a fantastic full-colour inner sleeve with photos of the recording sessions is a gem. There were over 100,000 copies of the album sold. And still is there a demand for it.
The last film he scored, was the Danish animated feature Valhalla (1986). The soundtrack album was only released in Scandinavia and that is really a pity. The released soundtracks of Goodwin's animation-scores were more or less fairytale records for children: narration with background music and songs. But that is not the case with "Valhalla". This is a fantastic symphonic score, without the many songs which seems to be obligatory in all animation films. This music would perfectly fit a live-motion film, it is full of fresh and new elements. Maybe this is also a result of synergy, because he wrote this score in collaboration with the Dane, Bent Hesselmann.
In 1979 the City Fathers of his native town Plymouth invited him to compose a Suite for the commemoration of the 400th Anniversary of Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the Globe. The vicinity of the Atlantic and the atmosphere of a harbour-town in his childhood years, probably had their influence on this Suite.
The influence of his lengthy stay in hit parade environments and his accompaniments of various pop artistes are audible in several scores. For instance That Riviera Touch (1966) and Kill or Cure (1962) are really swinging numbers. A problem for Goodwin was that his best scores were made in a period when film producers were not particularly interested in releasing a soundtrack, so many of them failed to get a release.
In 1970 Ron Goodwin was invited by the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to conduct a programme of his film music. To ease the tension between items, he improvised and told the audience some remarks and anecdotes about the performed pieces. They started to laugh. It turned out to be the turning point in his career. The idea was born to bring in concert a mixture of film and light music and the items melt together with a touch of humour. Within a few months a tour was organized and he toured constantly with different well-known Symphony orchestras all over the world, always playing to a full house. The orchestras he toured with included: The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, The Odense Symphony Orchestra, The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, The Denver Symphony Orchestra and The Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
Ron Goodwin has scored approximately 70 films, there are between 70 and 80 albums released of his music and he recorded and accompanied on 250-350 singles. Films of the type like "Where Eagles Dare", "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines" and "Monte Carlo or Bust", to which the music of Ron Goodwin makes a great contribution, are not being made anymore. And that is unfortunate in two ways: firstly, because we will not see those kind of films anymore and secondly, because we will not hear that kind of music anymore!- Composer
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Christopher Gordon was born in London, England, UK. He is known for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), Daybreakers (2009) and Mao's Last Dancer (2009).- Composer
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Musical talent ran in Marvin Hamlisch's family - his father was an accordionist, and at seven Hamlisch was the youngest student ever accepted by Manhattan's Julliard School of Music. Hamlich furthered his education by taking night classes at Queens College and working during the day as a rehearsal pianist for Broadway shows. He eventually began composing songs for stage productions. In 1968 he met film producer Sam Spiegel, resulting in his first film score for The Swimmer (1968) (he had previously written some songs for a low-budget teen epic, Ski Party (1965), but did not do the score for it). Hamlisch became well versed in the very specialized field of film scoring. In addition to scoring films, he ventured into film production as co-producer of The Entertainer (1975). In 1976 he won a Tony award for his scoring of the Broadway show, A Chorus Line (1985).- Music Department
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Composer ("'Batman' Theme), conductor, arrager and trumpeter, educated in high school and through private music study. He was a trumpeter and arranger with dance orchestras including those of Harry James, Woody Herman, and Charlie Spivak between 1941 and 1951. He was a staff arranger and arranger for the "Arthur Godfrey Show" and the "Kate Smith Show" over ABC, and also formed his own orchestra, playing theatres, hotels, clubs and colleges, and made many recordings. Joining ASCAP in 1953, his oher popular song and instrumental compositions include "Coral Reef", "Cute", "Plymouth Rock", "Buttercup", "Two for the Blues", "Oh What a Night for Love", "Cherry Point", "The Kid from Red Bank", "Repetition", "Splanky", "Sunday Morning", "Hot Pink", "Little Pony", "Lake Placid", "Why Not?", "Blowin' Up a Storm", "I'm Shoutin' Again", "Eee Dee", "Jump for Johnny", "The Long Night", "The Good Earth", "Wildroot", "Late Date", "It's Always Nice to Be With You", "I Must Know", and "Girl Talk".- Music Department
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The man behind the low woodwinds that open Citizen Kane (1941), the shrieking violins of Psycho (1960), and the plaintive saxophone of Taxi Driver (1976) was one of the most original and distinctive composers ever to work in film. He started early, winning a composition prize at the age of 13 and founding his own orchestra at the age of 20. After writing scores for Orson Welles's radio shows in the 1930s (including the notorious 1938 "The War of the Worlds" broadcast), he was the obvious choice to score Welles's film debut, Citizen Kane (1941), and, subsequently, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), although he removed his name from the latter after additional music was added without his (or Welles's) consent when the film was mutilated by a panic-stricken studio. Herrmann was a prolific film composer, producing some of his most memorable work for Alfred Hitchcock, for whom he wrote nine scores. A notorious perfectionist and demanding (he once said that most directors didn't have a clue about music, and he blithely ignored their instructions--like Hitchcock's suggestion that Psycho (1960) have a jazz score and no music in the shower scene). He ended his partnership with Hitchcock after the latter rejected his score for Torn Curtain (1966) on studio advice. He was also an early experimenter in the sounds used in film scores, most famously The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), scored for two theremins, pianos, and a horn section; and was a consultant on the electronic sounds created by Oskar Sala on the mixtrautonium for The Birds (1963). His last score was for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) and died just hours after recording it. He also wrote an opera, "Wuthering Heights", and a cantata, "Moby Dick".- Music Department
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James Newton Howard attended the University of Southern California's music school, but dropped out to tour with Elton John, and eventually compose music for film and television. He started with Head Office (1985) in 1985. He has been nominated for eight Academy Awards. He currently is a songwriter, record producer, conductor, keyboardist, and film composer.- Composer
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Unlike many musicians who started to learn music while still in their childhood, Maurice Jarre was already late in his teens when he discovered music and decided to make a career in that field. Against his father's will, he enrolled at Conservatoire de Paris where he studied percussions, composition and harmonies. He also met and studied under Joseph Martenot, inventor of the Martenot Waves, an electronic keyboard that prefigured the modern synthesizer.
After leaving the Conservatoire, Jarre played percussion and Martenot Waves for a while at Jean-Louis Barrault's theater. In 1950, another actor-director, Jean Vilar , asked Jarre to score his production of Kleist's 'The Princess of Homburg', the first score Jarre wrote. Shortly after, Vilar created the 'Théâtre National Populaire' and hired Jarre as permanent composer, an association that lasted 12 years.
In 1951, filmmaker Georges Franju asked him to write the music of his 23 minutes documentary Hôtel des Invalides (1952), Jarre's first composition for the movie screen. His first full-length feature, again directed by Georges Franju, was Head Against the Wall (1959) followed by Franju's best known film, Eyes Without a Face (1960).
Jarre's career took a spectacular turn in 1961 when producer Sam Spiegel asked him to work on David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Initially, three composers were supposed to write the score, but for various reasons, Jarre ended up writing all the music himself and won his first Oscar. His second collaboration with David Lean on Doctor Zhivago (1965) earned him another Oscar and obtained a level of success rarely achieved by a film score. He collaborated with Lean again on Ryan's Daughter (1970) and A Passage to India (1984) for which he received a third Academy Award. He was set to score Lean's next movie, 'Nostromo', but the director became ill and died before the film could ever get made.
He also worked for directors as diverse as William Wyler (The Collector (1965)); John Huston (three films); Franco Zeffirelli (Jesus of Nazareth (1977)); Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum (1979) [The Tin Drum] and Circle of Deceit (1981) [Circle of Deceit]); Peter Weir (four films); Michael Apted (Gorillas in the Mist (1988)) and Alfonso Arau (A Walk in the Clouds (1995)).
Mainly perceived as a symphonist and known for his prominent use of percussions, Jarre often integrated ethnic instruments in his orchestrations like cithara on 'Lawrence of Arabia' or fujara (an old Slovak flute) on 'The Tin Drum'. During the eighties, he incorporated synthetic sounds in his music, writing his first entirely electronic score for The Year of Living Dangerously (1982). His son Jean-Michel Jarre is a well-known popular musician.- Music Department
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Michael Kamen was born on 15 April 1948 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a composer and actor, known for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), Don Juan DeMarco (1994) and X-Men (2000). He was married to Sandra Keenan. He died on 18 November 2003 in London, England, UK.- Composer
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Tuomas Kantelinen was born on 22 September 1969 in Finland. He is a composer and producer, known for Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan (2007), The Italian Key (2011) and The Legend of Hercules (2014). He is married to Rosa Karo.- Composer
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Rolfe Kent was born in 1963 in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England, UK. He is a composer and producer, known for Up in the Air (2009), Downsizing (2017) and Sideways (2004).- Composer
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Michael J Lewis, the award winning composer and producer was born in Aberystwyth, Wales. He trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London where he studied harmony, counterpoint and composition. His many film scores include Julius Caesar (1970) starring Charlton Heston, The Medusa Touch (1978) starring 'Richard Burton', 11 Harrowhouse (1974) starring James Mason, The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970) starring Roger Moore and The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969) starring Katharine Hepburn for which he won the Ivor Novello Award. His 1973 Broadway show, 'Cyrano', earned the writers a Grammy nomination and the show's star, Christopher Plummer, a Tony Award. Michael's score for the 1979 TV animated adaptation of C.S. Lewis's _Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The (1979) (TV)_ won him a coveted Emmy Award. He moved from the UK to the USA in the 1980s and his first venture into American films, writing the score for The Rose and the Jackal (1990), starring Christopher Reeve, achieved an American Cable Excellence nomination. Michael J Lewis' last film score to date was for the 1994 martial arts thriller Deadly Target (1994). He currently divides his time composing, producing and recording between the USA and the UK. In the mid 1990s he formed his own company called Pen Dinas Productions, the first release in 1995 being the highly acclaimed double CD entitled 'Orchestral Film Music of Michael J Lewis', which received outstanding critical reviews.- Composer
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Composer of the Emmy-winning show Dexter (2006) and hugely popular video games, Silent Hill and Dishonored, one of Daniel Licht's first experiences as a musician resulted in him hanging out with Miles Davis and playing jazz with Don Cherry in New York City. Licht continued to develop as a musician by playing around the world. In Germany, Holland, and Northern Europe he performed and composed music for theatre and dance companies, then Licht went on to Japan and Indonesia where he participated in Gamelan orchestras on the islands of Java and Bali. These travels broadened Licht's definition of music. You may be surprised to know that knives, duct tape, wine glasses, saws, scissors, and even human bones (!) have been used as instruments and recorded at his studio. It was his good friend and colleague, composer Christopher Young, (Spider-Man 3 (2007)), who beckoned Licht west. Once in Hollywood, Licht began collaborating with directors and producers on a variety of projects such as Stephen Kings thriller Thinner (1996), Ben Stiller's drama Permanent Midnight (1998) and the Bradley Cooper comedy Kitchen Confidential (2005).
His irreverent combinations of musical styles soon earned him a reputation as a wholly original composer and he became the favorite of iconoclastic film-makers. He was asked to score The Winner (1996) for Indie icon Alex Cox, while Sundance Film Festival darling Gregg Araki hired him for Splendor (1999) and Oscar-winner Xavier Koller asked Licht to score Cowboy Up (2001). Clive Barker handpicked Licht to score Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996), and ABC selected Licht to compose music for their sleeper hit Body of Proof (2011). NBC requested Licht to score Deception (2013) and contribute additional music for their hit action-thriller The Blacklist (2013).
Most recently Licht completed two seasons for SundanceTV of their dramatic series The Red Road (2014), starring Jason Momoa (Game of Thrones (2011)) and Martin Henderson (The Ring (2002)). He has recently finished the much anticipated video game Dishonored 2 (2016) and the exciting new series Guilt (2016) for ABC Freeform.- Music Department
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Born in Cleveland, Ohio, but brought up in Pennsylvania, where he played the flute in a local band, as a youth, before sending some arrangements to Benny Goodman. Goodman offered him a job and, after serving in WWII, he joined the rearranged Glenn Miller band. In 1952, he was given a two-week assignment at Universal to work on an Bud Abbott and Lou Costello film and ended up staying for six years. Success with The Glenn Miller Story (1954) allowed him to score many other films, helping along the way to change the style of film background music by injecting jazz into the traditional orchestral arrangements of the 1950s. He was nominated for 18 Oscars and won four; in addition, he won 20 Grammys and 2 Emmys, made over 50 albums and had 500 works published. Mancini collaborated extensively with Blake Edwards -- firstly on TV's Peter Gunn (1958), then on Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), which won him two Oscars; he won further Oscars for the titles song for Days of Wine and Roses (1962) and the score for Victor/Victoria (1982); he will be best-remembered for the theme tune for The Pink Panther (1963).- Music Department
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Inducted into the ASCAP Jazz Wall of Fame in 2009 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame a year later, Johnny Mandel is perhaps best known as the composer of the iconic M*A*S*H (1972) theme song, "Suicide is Painless". Born and raised in Manhattan, he was the son of a garment manufacturer and an opera singer. Music was a major part of his family (an uncle was a writer of show tunes). Johnny learned to play piano, trumpet and trombone in quick succession and was mentored in arranging by Van Alexander. He refined his natural abilities by completing studies at the Manhattan School of Music and the prestigious Juilliard School. By his mid-teens, he worked with big bands, starting professionally in 1943 with the orchestra of violinist Joe Venuti. He became noted in the era as one of the most accomplished arrangers (also doubling on trombone until 1954), working for some of the most popular swing outfits like Artie Shaw, Boyd Raeburn, Jimmy Dorsey, Charlie Barnet, Alvino Rey, and Buddy Rich. By the mid-50s, he devoted his time primarily to arranging and writing jazz compositions, among many others, for Stan Getz, Count Basie and Woody Herman. His songs include standards like "The Straight Life", "Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams" and the beautiful love theme for the motion picture The Sandpiper (1965), "The Shadow of Your Smile", which won him an Academy Award for Best Original Song (shared with lyricist Paul Francis Webster, with whom he also collaborated on An American Dream (1966)). Mandel has worked on numerous film and TV soundtracks as composer and/or conductor/orchestrator. As arranger, he worked with some of the most famous recording artists, including Quincy Jones, Frank Sinatra, Natalie Cole (her "Unforgettable" album) and Barbra Streisand. A five-time Grammy Award winner, Mandel was a member of ASCAP from 1956 and served on the Board of Directors from 1989.- Music Department
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Two-time Emmy-award winning composer/arranger Hummie Mann has collaborated with some of Hollywood's most celebrated directors in both theatrical and television films. His motion pictures projects have ranged from Mel Brooks' "Robin Hood: Men in Tights" to Peter Yates' "Year of the Comet", the children's film "Thomas and the Magic Railroad" to "Wooly Boys" directed by Leszek Burzynski starring Peter Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, Keith Carradine and Joe Mazzello. For television, he has scored projects for Simon Wincer (the miniseries "P.T. Barnum"), Jonathan Kaplan (the miniseries re-make of "In Cold Blood"), Norman Jewison ("Picture Windows"), Peter Bogdanovich ("The Rescuers: Tales of Courage - Two Women"), Joe Dante ("Masters of Horror: Homecoming"), Jim Abrahams ("First Do No Harm"), Richard Friedenberg ("Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas"), William Friedkin, John Milius and Ralph Bakshi (all part of the "Rebel Highway" series), among others.
Mann was honored with his second Emmy Award for an episode of Showtime's Picture Windows entitled "Language of the Heart", a love story about a street musician and an aspiring ballerina. The composer's score so impressed director Jonathan Kaplan that Kaplan hired him to write the music for CBS's "In Cold Blood" starring Anthony Edwards and Eric Roberts.
The four-hour miniseries, based on the Truman Capote classic about two young drifters and the murder of a Midwestern family, demanded an unorthodox musical approach. Mann took the lyrics actually written by one of the killers (an amateur songwriter) and set them to music; the songs thus became the heart of the score, which was played by a handful of instruments including mandolin, dobro and bottleneck blues guitar supported by electronic textures.
Kaplan says that Oscar-winning movie-music legend Jerry Goldsmith recommended Mann as a composer with a strong sense of melody and a genuine command of the orchestra. Adds Kaplan: "It's very rare that you can find someone who is as gifted as Hummie is, and as motivated and easy to work with."
In the world of Independent films, Mann scored "Falltime" for first time director Paul Warner, starring Mickey Rourke, Stephen Baldwin and Sheryl Lee. That film premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival. Mann has also scored films by two well-known screenwriters making their initial forays into directing. He composed a contemporary jazz-rock score for the coming-of-age story "Sticks & Stones" by Neil Tolkin, and also scored the short film "The Red Coat" for Little Women writer Robin Swicord.
Twice Mann has collaborated with legendary comedy director Mel Brooks. His first Brooks score was for "Robin Hood: Men in Tights", which NBC-TV critic Gene Shalit singled out for praise, likening it to the legendary Erich Wolfgang Korngold's scores for the classic swashbucklers of the '30s and '40s. He also scored Brooks' next film- "Dracula: Dead & Loving It" which starred Leslie Nielsen. The grand-scale symphonic music for Brooks' two film parodies contrasts sharply with Mann's acoustic- guitar-based score for the Donald Sutherland-Amy Irving thriller "Benefit of the Doubt", and the soaring, charming music for Peter Yates' "Year of the Comet", which combined orchestral sounds with Scottish ethnic elements. Yates, the director of Bullitt and The Deep, found "a freshness and energy" in Mann's music for "Year of the Comet". The periodical 'Film Score Monthly' named this score as one of the "Ten Most Underrated Scores of the Decade".
Among Mann's most provocative projects have been two series for Showtime: "Picture Windows", which Norman Jewison executive-produced and which enabled the composer to collaborate with Jewison, Kaplan, Dante and Bob Rafelson; and "Rebel Highway", a series of drive-in-movie remakes by Kaplan, Friedkin, Milius, Dante, Ralph Bakshi, John McNaughton, Mary Lambert and Uli Edel. Mann also composed the main title theme music for both series.
Mann co-produced the Marc Shaiman scores for such hits as "Sleepless in Seattle", "A Few Good Men" and "Mr. Saturday Night", and both orchestrated and conducted the Shaiman scores for "City Slickers" and "The Addams Family". His orchestrations can also heard in such films as "Speechless", "Addams Family Values", "Misery", "Sister Act", "Dying Young", and "For the Boys" and he co-arranged the song "Places That Belong to You" for Barbra Streisand's best-selling "Prince of Tides" soundtrack album. He also composed the Carl Stalling-style underscore for "Box Office Bunny", the first theatrical Bugs Bunny cartoon released in 26 years.
In television, Mann composed the main title theme and underscore for Rob Reiner's cult series "Morton & Hayes". He received two Emmy nominations for his arrangements on the popular "Moonlighting" series, and received an Emmy Award for arranging Billy Crystal's opening number for the "1992 Academy Awards" telecast.
For the legit theater, Mann arranged new material for Debbie Reynolds' tour of "The Unsinkable Molly Brown". He created new arrangements for Pia Zadora in the Long Beach Civic Light Opera's production of "Funny Girl", and has arranged music for several other Southern California stage productions including "Babes in Toyland", "Kiss Me Kate", "The Merry Widow" and Cloris Leachman's "Perfectly Frank". His original children's theater musical adaptation of Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" premiered at the Seattle Children's Theater in 2006 for an extremely successful run of over 110 performances. It will be produced at Childsplay in Arizona and the Des Moines Playhouse in 2007.
Born in Montreal, Mann began studying music at the age of seven. He learned to play not only the piano, but also recorder, guitar, clarinet and oboe. He graduated magna cum laude in 1976 from Boston's prestigious Berklee College of Music and moved in 1980 to Los Angeles, where he began orchestrating and composing for such top-rated series as "Fame", "Moonlighting", "Knots Landing", "ALF" and "The Simpsons". In early 1998 Berklee Faculty member and world renowned vibraphonist Gary Burton presented Mann with Berklee's Distinguished Alumnus Award.
Besides his busy composing career, Mann is also the principal instructor of the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program and a guest lecturer at Napier University in Scotland. He has twice visited China as a guest artist of the Chinese government meeting with students and film makers and composers. He is a board member and founding president of the Seattle Composers Alliance and a governor of the Northwest Chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.- Composer
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Kevin is an industry veteran composing genre-bending music in film, television, games, and commercials. Being trusted with iconic established brands as well as original emerging properties, Kevin creatively delivers an emotional and story-driven sound within each score. He is a multi-instrumentalist, fanatical about creating his own sounds & samples, who loves collecting rare and interesting world instruments. Live musicians and ensembles grace his scoring stage, where Kevin can also be found performing and recording his scores.- Composer
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Bear McCreary is a degreed graduate of the prestigious USC Thornton School of Music (in 'Composition and Recording Arts'). Bear McCreary was one of a small and select group of proteges of the late, many-honored film composer Elmer Bernstein. Although he is now firmly in the mainstream of film composition, many of McCreary's earliest soundtrack-music compositions were for independent motion picture productions.- Composer
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Mark McKenzie studied composition with renown classical composers Pierre Boulez, Witold Lutoslawski, and Morten Lauridsen among others. After becoming the first Composition graduate at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire and earning his Masters in Composition at the University of Southern CA, Mark was singled out honored as "The Outstanding USC Doctoral Music Graduate." He was kept on by the USC faculty to teach Music Theory while pursuing his love of film music. McKenzie's first opportunities were orchestrations for movie composers beginning with Academy Award nominated Bruce Broughton on the Steven Spielberg / Barry Levinson film Young Sherlock Holmes. That soundtrack was nominated for a Grammy Award and Mark quickly became the behind the scenes "go to" orchestrator for the elite Hollywood composers such as Academy Award winning Jerry Goldsmith, John Barry, Danny Elfman, Randy Edelman, Alan Silvestri, John Powell, John Williams and others. McKenzie also worked alongside pop artists such as Michael Jackson, Nile Rogers, and Sir Paul McCartney. His credits include blockbuster films such as the Academy Award Winning Dances With Wolves, Good Will Hunting, Men in Black, Nightmare Before Christmas, Spiderman 1 & 2, Mr and Mrs Smith, Star Trek VI,VII and IX, The Patriot, A Few Good Men, Ice Age, Sleepless in Seattle and the hit Bungi game Destiny. Legendary Academy Award winning composer Jerry Goldsmith, in addition to relying on McKenzie to orchestrate his final 7 films, called upon Mark to compose for him when time constraints and health issues required it. One example is a piece called "Prison Uprising" composed for Goldsmith's score to The Last Castle. It can be heard by clicking on The Last Castle Album cover. Goldsmith collaborated closely with Mark repeatedly saying: "Mark is my godsend." Paul McCartney called McKenzie "Brilliant." Director and actor LeVar Burton wrote: "Working with Mark was truly a highlight and one of the best experiences of my career."
As a composer, Mark's film music creates a psychologically intricate inner life to enhance the multi dimensions of characters, giving reference to past or future story elements and heightening the experience of the story. Directors speak of Mark's "unerring instincts to capture the film's emotional core" and "imbue each scene with nuanced music to knit together and propel the story, character and emotions" using words to describe it such as: "beautiful," "timeless," "epic," and "intensely human." Mark is one of the very few composers who both composes and orchestrates every note himself. His latest epic original score (Max and Me) for a film to be premiered at World Youth Days is about Polish priest Maxamilian Kolbe who, through pure compassion, sacrificed his life for another in the Auschwitz concentration camp starvation bunker. It was recorded at Abbey Road Studios with concert violinist Joshua Bell, large orchestra, choir and the London boys choir Libera and will be released on the Sony Classical label.
Variety's "Eye on the Oscars" states: "Mark McKenzie's commanding orchestral prowess puts him among the foremost symphonists in Hollywood." The Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter, and numerous film music periodicals call his music "strikingly original...soul-stirring...majestic...spiritual...deeply profound...filled with unfathomable beauty and power...some of the most beautiful, lyrical, and emotionally resonant music ever written for film."
Variety writes: "McKenzie is finally grabbing the limelight thanks to an obscure indie Mexican 3D animated spiritual film called The Greatest Miracle (El Gran Milagro)." The Greatest Miracle won the Hollywood Music in Media Award's "Best Indie Score of the year." It was doubly nominated as "Best Score of the Year" and "Best Animated Movie Score of the Year" by the International Film Music Critics Association. The Greatest Miracle was described by Movie Music UK as "...some of the most beautiful lyrical, and emotionally resonant music ever written for film." While the score did not get nominated for an Academy Award, Mark and the score were featured in Variety's "Eye on the Oscars." The Greatest Miracle was repeatedly on "Top Ten Scores of the Year" lists.
Mark's original music has been heard in every corner of the globe. He composed the opening and closing theme music to the longest running and most honored television series in history "The Hallmark Hall of Fame." His original scores such as The Greatest Miracle, The Ultimate Gift, Blizzard, Saving Sarah Cain, The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca, Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde, Frank and Jesse and four Hallmark Hall of Fame films are all available on compact disc and via digital download and streaming through most major soundtrack outlets. Mark's original music has been featured repeatedly on the Academy Awards, underscored the Olympics, performed before the Pope, heard at Disney World, California Adventures, Wimbledon and in countless other venues. His choral work "Gloria," first premiered at the 2000th Crystal Cathedral Hour of Power broadcast has become a perennial Christmas favorite around the USA.
Mark McKenzie is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Oscars), The Television Academy (Emmy), The Society of Composers and Lyricists, and the BMI performing rights organization.- Composer
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Joel McNeely was born on 28 March 1959 in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. He is a composer, known for Air Force One (1997), The Avengers (1998) and Soldier (1998).- Composer
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Vic Mizzy was born on 9 January 1916 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was a composer and actor, known for The Addams Family (1964), Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) and Deliver Us from Evil (2014). He died on 17 October 2009 in Bel-Air, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Composer
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A classmate of director Sergio Leone with whom he would form one of the great director/composer partnerships (right up there with Eisenstein & Prokofiev, Hitchcock & Herrmann, Fellini & Rota), Ennio Morricone studied at Rome's Santa Cecilia Conservatory, where he specialized in trumpet. His first film scores were relatively undistinguished, but he was hired by Leone for A Fistful of Dollars (1964) on the strength of some of his song arrangements. His score for that film, with its sparse arrangements, unorthodox instrumentation (bells, electric guitars, harmonicas, the distinctive twang of the jew's harp) and memorable tunes, revolutionized the way music would be used in Westerns, and it is hard to think of a post-Morricone Western score that doesn't in some way reflect his influence. Although his name will always be synonymous with the spaghetti Western, Morricone has also contributed to a huge range of other film genres: comedies, dramas, thrillers, horror films, romances, art movies, exploitation movies - making him one of the film world's most versatile artists. He has written nearly 400 film scores, so a brief summary is impossible, but his most memorable work includes the Leone films, Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers (1966) , Roland Joffé's The Mission (1986), Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (1987) and Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso (1988), plus a rare example of sung opening credits for Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966).- Music Department
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John Morris was born on 18 October 1926 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, USA. He was a composer, known for Blazing Saddles (1974), The Elephant Man (1980) and Coach (1989). He was married to Francesca Bosetti. He died on 25 January 2018 in Red Hook, New York, USA.- Music Department
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In his 25 year career, David Newman has scored over 100 films, ranging from War of the Roses, Matilda, Bowfinger and Heathers, to the more recent The Spirit, Serenity, and Alvin and the Chipmonks: The Squeakuel. Newman's music has brought to life the critically acclaimed dramas Brokedown Palace and Hoffa; top-grossing comedies Norbit, Scooby-Doo, Galaxy Quest, The Nutty Professor, The Flinstones, Throw Mama From the Train; and award-winning animated films Ice Age, The Brave Little Toaster and Anastasia. The recipient of top honors from the music and motion picture industries, he holds an Academy Award nomination for his score to the animated feature, Anastasia, and was the first composer to have his piece, 1001 Nights, performed in the Los Angeles Philharmonic's FILMHARMONIC Series, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Newman is also a highly sought-after conductor and appears with leading orchestras throughout the world, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Berlin Score Orchestra, National Orchestra of Belgium, New Japan Philharmonic, Utah Symphony, and the American Symphony. He has led subscription week with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall and regularly conducts the Hollywood Bowl.
Also an active composer for the concert hall, his works have been performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Indianapolis Symphony, Long Beach Symphony, and at the Ravinia Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, and Chicago's Grant Park Music Festival.
Newman has spent considerable time unearthing and restoring film music classics for the concert hall, and headed the Sundance Institute's music preservation program in the late 1980s. During his tenure at Sundance he wrote an original score and conducted the Utah Symphony for the classic silent motion picture, Sunrise, which opened the Sundance Film Festival in 1989. As a tribute to his work in film music preservation, he was elected President of the Film Music Society in 2007, a nonprofit organization formed by entertainment industry professionals to preserve and restore motion picture and television music. Passionate about nurturing the next generation of musicians, Newman services as President of the Board of the American Youth Symphony, a forty-three year-old pre-professional orchestra based in Los Angeles, where he launched the three-year "Jerry Goldsmith Project." In 2007 he wrote the children't melodrama Yoko and the Tooth Fairy for Crossroads School in Santa Monica, CA, and in 2010 he served on the faculty of the Aspen Music Festival in the Film Scoring Program. When his schedule permits, he visit Los Angeles area high schools to speak about film scoring and mentor young composers.
The son of nine-time Oscar-winning composer, Alfred Newman, David Newman was born in Los Angeles in 1954. He trained in violin and piano from an early age and earned degrees in orchestral conducting and violin from the University of Southern California.- Music Artist
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Randy Newman is an American film composer and singer who is well-known for composing The Princess and the Frog, Meet the Parents and various Pixar films including the Toy Story, Monsters, Inc and Cars franchises as well as A Bug's Life. He wrote iconic songs such as "Short People", "You've Got A Friend in Me" and "We Belong Together". He won Best Original Song for Toy Story 3.- Music Department
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Thomas Newman is an American film score composer. He was born in Los Angeles. His father was notable film score composer Alfred Newman (1900-1970). The Newman family is of Russian-Jewish descent, and includes several other well-known musicians. Thomas' mother Martha Louis Montgomery (1920-2005) wanted her sons to have a musical education. Thomas attended regular lessons in violin as a child. An older Thomas received his musical education while attending the University of Southern California and Yale University. Thomas Newman graduated as Bachelor of Arts in 1977, and a Master of Music in 1978.
Thomas originally composed music for theatrical productions in Broadway, working with his mentor Stephen Sondheim. His uncle Lionel Newman asked him to compose music for the television series "The Paper Chase" (1978-1979, 1986), which was Thomas' first credit in a television production.
In the 1980s, Thomas first worked in film. Composer John Williams, a close family friend, hired Thomas to work in the music department for space opera film "Return of the Jedi" (1983). Thomas' main work in the film was orchestrating the music in a scene where character Darth Vader dies. Afterwards, Thomas was approached by film producer Scott Rudin and hired to work as a film score composer in his own right. His first work in the field was the film score of romantic drama "Reckless" (1984).
While he worked regularly as a film score composer during the 1980s, Thomas reportedly felt he had to retrain himself for a hard and demanding job. It reportedly took him 8 years to not feel fraudulent in his efforts. In 1994, Thomas received his first Academy Award nominations, for the film scores of "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994) and "Little Women" (1994). He lost the Award to rival composer Hans Zimmer, who had been nominated for the film score of the animated film "The Lion King" (1994).
Newman was an established and increasingly famous composer in the 1990s. He received further Academy Award nominations, although he never actually won. Among his more notable works was the film score of the drama film "American Beauty" (1999), which earned Thomas both a Grammy and a BAFTA award. Newman had a good working relationship with the film's director Sam Mendes. Mendes has kept hiring Thomas as the composer for most of his films. The main exception being the comedy-drama film "Away We Go" (2009), which did not have a film score.
In the 2000s, Thomas continued working in high-profile films, such as "Road to Perdition" (2002), "Finding Nemo" (2003), and "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events". By 2006, he had been nominated eight times for an Academy Award, while never winning it. He started joking about his lack of victories in public.
In 2008, Thomas was nominated for two Academy Awards, for both the film score and an original song for the animated film "WALL-E" (2008). He won neither, though the hit song "Down to Earth" earned him a Grammy Award. He continues to work regularly in the 2010s. Among his more acclaimed works were the film scores for spy film "Skyfall" (2012) and period drama "Saving Mr. Banks" (2013). He has continued being nominated for Academy Awards. As of 2020, he has been nominated 15 times for the Academy Award. He is the most nominated living composer to have never actually won an Academy Award, tied with Alex North. He has won a total of 5 Grammy awards.- Composer
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Producer and film composer. Now executive producer of new online channel Pulped.com, after a long career as a film and TV composer. Graduate of the National Film and Television School (UK). He started his career as a producer and director for Channel Four Equinox science strand, before eventually moving into composing for film and television. Successes as composer included credits for Peppa Pig and the Wallace and Gromit films. Now engaged in developing the new Pulped brand as content producer and CEO of the channel.- Music Department
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John Ottman holds dual distinctions as a leading film composer and an award winning film editor. Ottman has often completed both monumental tasks on the same films. Such remarkable double duties have included The Usual Suspects, X-Men 2, Superman Returns, Valkyrie, and Jack the Giant Killer. He has also held producer roles on several of these films, as well as directing, editing and scoring Urban Legends 2.
From an early age in San Jose, California, Ottman began writing and recording radio plays on cassette tapes. He'd perform many characters with his voice (and some sound effects), and called upon his neighborhood friends as extra cast members.
By the fourth grade, Ottman was playing the clarinet and continued doing so throughout high school. But his real concentration turned from audio productions to making films. He turned his parents' garage into a movie studio, where multiple sets were interchangeable to accommodate productions - invariably some sort of science fiction film. By high school, his films evolved to hour-long productions complete with large sets and lavish scores edited together from his favorite soundtracks.
Having been a veteran of numerous short films, Ottman excelled at USC film school, receiving accolades for his direction of actors and for how masterfully he edited their performances. It was in this directing course that a graduate filmmaker asked Ottman to re-edit his thesis film. John modified the story from raw footage and also designed the film's extensive sound. The film ended up winning the student Academy Award. On that film, Ottman met a production assistant named Bryan Singer.
Singer, only aware of Ottman's editing (Ottman stayed awake into the wee hours learning midi gear and composing music), asked him to edit a short film starring Ethan Hawke - a childhood friend of Singer's. Ottman ended up co-directing the film (Lion's Den) as well as editing and doing the sound design.
Ottman edited Singer's first feature, Public Access. His effective sequences and editorial montages became the highlight of the picture. In the eleventh hour, the film lost its composer. Singer asked Ottman to write the score, after much prodding from the editor. Public Access received the Grand Jury Prize at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, with the score and editing being lauded in reviews.
With The Usual Suspects and future Singer films, Ottman held to a promise that, despite his scoring dreams, he would commit to the months required to also serve as editor on Singer's films. The wary producers of The Usual Suspects gave the go-ahead for him to both edit the complicated picture and write the score, the demands of which no one had undergone. The film was edited in Ottman's living room on a Steinbeck flatbed and a splicer. The Usual Suspects and Ottman's work received widespread acclaim, earning Ottman the British Academy Awards for his editing, a Saturn Award for his score, and a nomination by the American Cinema Editors.
Since then, Ottman has scored numerous films with the intent of keeping thematic film scoring alive. Ottman also made a brief foray into television for which he received an Emmy nomination ("Fantasy Island.")- Composer
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Amotz is best known for the Netflix dark comedy series Haters Back Off as well as his critically acclaimed scores for Marvel, including Astonishing X-Men, Iron Man Extremis, and Thor and Loki: Blood Brothers.
He has scored numerous independent films including Struggle produced by Leonardo DiCaprio for Netflix and Till Human Voices Wake Us, (Paramount Classics) starring Helena Bonham Carter and Guy Pierce.
His commercial scoring repertoire includes commercials for Revlon, Ralph Lauren, Victoria's Secret, Chevrolet, and Bose.
Amotz spent his formative rock n roll years in Tel Aviv. He attended Berklee College of Music in Boston before moving to L.A.
Amotz owns Underground Music, a high production value music library with thousands of tracks, combining music licensing with custom work for trailers, advertising, and television shows. Amotz has composed trailers for many major film releases, including Avatar, Safe House, The Amazing Spiderman, and The Expendables.
Amotz recently produced two CDs: Omar Faruk Tekbilek's, Love is My Religion, and Notes from the Whistler, featuring Alessandro Alessandroni, the whistler and arranger of the Ennio Morricone scored Spaghetti Western films of Sergio Leone.
Amotz lives with his writer wife, genius daughter, a couple of horses, and a handful of other annoying animals just outside of Los Angles.- Composer
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Terry Plumeri (b. 11/28/1944 - d. 03/31/2016), Multi-Platinum and Gold Record recording artist, began music at the age of 10 and went on to attend The Manhattan School of Music in New York City on scholarship. It was here that Terry studied with Robert Brennand, principal bass of the New York Philharmonic. Later, during his period as a bassist with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington D.C., he studied composition and conducting with the Hungarian conductor/composer Antal Dorati, himself a student of the legendary Bela Bartok. Most recently, he was honored to be a guest conductor and composing for the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, live at Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow.
Terry wrote the music to over 57 feature films and television scores, which includes the score to the award winning crime story One False Move, which has recently been added to "The New York Times List of the 1000 Best Films Ever Made". His score for One False Move was nominated for Best Score by the IFP Spirit Awards.
Terry played with such jazz greats as Cannonball Adderley, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Quincy Jones, Arthur Prysock, Frank Sinatra, Joe Williams, Les McCann, Yusef Lateef, John Abercrombie and Woody Herman. Notable performances include Carniegie Hall/New York City, Albert Hall/London, Herodicus Atticus Theater/Athens, Tchaikovsky Hall/Moscow, as well as the Newport, Monterey and Montreux jazz festivals.
He was murdered in his home on 3/31/2016.- Music Department
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Basil Poledouris was born on August 21, 1945 in Kansas City. He started taking piano lessons when he was 7 years old. Eventually, he went on to become a student at USC, where he studied the arts of directing, cinematography, editing, sound and, of course, music. It was also at USC he met John Milius and Randal Kleiser, both acclaimed directors with whom he would work in the future. Even though Basil had already composed music to John Milius' much talked about Big Wednesday (1978), his real breakthrough came in 1982 when he composed the score to Milius' epic fantasy movie, Conan the Barbarian (1982). The powerful themes that Basil created for this movie opened the eyes of the movie industry, as well as the public, and it is arguably one of the best soundtracks of the 80s. Basil went on to make soundtracks for such movies as: RoboCop (1987) (the second Paul Verhoeven movie of many for which he has composed, the first being 1985's Flesh+Blood (1985)), Lonesome Dove (1989) (for which he won an Emmy), Farewell to the King (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Free Willy (1993), in Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers (1997) with Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards and Les Misérables (1998).- Composer
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John Powell was born on 18 September 1963 in London, England, UK. He is a composer, known for How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014), Happy Feet (2006) and Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018). He was previously married to Melinda Lerner.- Music Department
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German-American pianist, composer, arranger and conductor André George Previn (born Andreas Ludwig Priwin, in Berlin) was for eight decades a hugely influential and prolific figure in jazz, as well as classical and film music. Being Jewish, Previn's family was forced to leave Hitler's Germany in 1939. Hollywood naturally beckoned, since André's grand uncle (Charles Previn) was already well established as musical director at Universal (1936-42). Child prodigy André recorded his first piano jazz album at the age of sixteen while continuing studies at Beverly Hills High School.
He joined MGM at age 17 in 1946 (initially as an uncredited music supervisor/arranger), later as orchestra conductor and still later as a composer of film scores. He remained under contract at the studio until 1960. During his tenure in Hollywood, he was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning four (all for Best Adapted Score: Gigi (1958), Porgy and Bess (1959), Irma la Douce (1963), and My Fair Lady (1964)). In the 1950s, he recorded several acclaimed jazz albums with drummer Shelly Manne and pianist Russ Freeman, featuring excellent tracks like "Who's on First" and "Strike Out the Band". He began conducting with the St. Louis Symphony in 1961 while still working primarily as a jazz and studio musician. Much of his recorded work consisted of show tunes adapted for jazz. Gradually, his interest in classical music won out.
By the late 1960s, Previn had settled in England and in 1968 was made principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, a position he occupied for eleven years. His popularity led to cameo TV appearances (including a famous sketch for the 1971 Christmas special of the The Morecambe & Wise Show (1968), in which he appeared as "Mr. Andrew Preview") and television advertising (Vauxhall, Ferguson TX portable television etc.). From 1985 to 1989, he was musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic as well as with the Royal Philharmonic (1985-88, subsequently also principal conductor, from 1988-91).
In 1993, he was appointed conductor laureate of the London Symphony and three years later was made an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to music. He won 10 Grammy Awards (including two for jazz and two for film music) and was nominated for six Emmys. Previn latterly returned to recording jazz albums with, among others, Ella Fitzgerald (1983), Joe Pass & Ray Brown (1989), and Kiri Te Kanawa (1992). Two excellent tribute albums released, respectively in 1998 and 2000 for Deutsche Grammophon, were 'We Got Rhythm: A Gershwin Songbook' and 'We Got it Good: An Ellington Songbook'.
Married (and divorced) five times, his ex-wives included Dory Previn and Mia Farrow. Previn died in New York on February 28, 2019, aged 89.- Composer
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Leonard Rosenman was born on 7 September 1924 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was a composer, known for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), Barry Lyndon (1975) and La La Land (2016). He was married to Judie Gregg, Lyn Furr, Kay Scott and Adele Bracker. He died on 4 March 2008 in Woodland Hills, California, USA.- Music Department
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Composer Laurence Rosenthal was born in Detroit, Michigan. He studied piano and composition at the Eastman School of Music and later with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. His symphonic compositions have been premiered by Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philarmonic, among others. He has composed extensively for films and television. He has been nominated for two Oscars. Among his best-known film scores are A Raisin in the Sun (1961), The Miracle Worker (1962), Becket (1964), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977), The Return of a Man Called Horse (1976) and Peter Brook's Meetings with Remarkable Men (1979). He has won seven Emmys for miniseries, including Peter the Great (1986) and Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna (1986), as well as for episodes of George Lucas's The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992).- Composer
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Born in Milan in 1911 into a family of musicians, Nino Rota was first a student of Orefice and Pizzetti. Then, still a child, he moved to Rome where he completed his studies at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in 1929 with Alfredo Casella. In the meantime, he had become an 'enfant prodige', famous both as a composer and as an orchestra conductor. His first oratorio, "L'infanzia di San Giovanni Battista," was performed in Milan and Paris as early as 1923 and his lyrical comedy, "Il Principe Porcaro," was composed in 1926. From 1930 to 1932, Nino Rota lived in the USA. He won a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia where he attended classes in composition taught by Rosario Scalero and classes in orchestra taught by Fritz Reiner. He returned to Italy and earned a degree in literature from the University of Milan. In 1937, he began a teaching career that led to the directorship of the Bari Conservatory, a title he held from 1950 until his death in 1979. After his "childhood" compositions, Nino Rota wrote the following operas: Ariodante (Parma 1942), Torquemada (1943), Il cappello di paglia di Firenze (Palermo 1955), I due timidi (RAI 1950, London 1953), La notte di un neurastenico (Premio Italia 1959, La Scala 1960), Lo scoiattolo in gamba (Venezia 1959), Aladino e la lampada magica (Naples 1968), La visita meravigliosa (Palermo 1970), Napoli milionaria (Spoleto Festival 1977). He also wrote the following ballets: La rappresentazione di Adamo ed Eva (Perugia 1957), La Strada (La Scala 1965), Aci e Galatea (Rome 1971), Le Molière imaginaire (Paris and Brussels 1976) and Amor di poeta (Brussels 1978) for Maurice Béjart. In addition, there are countless works for orchestra that have been performed since before World War II and are still performed by orchestras in every part of the world. His work in film dates back to the early forties. His filmography includes the names of virtually all of the noted directors of his time. First among these is Federico Fellini. He wrote all of the movie scores for Fellini's films from The White Sheik (1952) in 1952 to Orchestra Rehearsal (1978) in 1978. Other directors include Renato Castellani, Luchino Visconti, Franco Zeffirelli, Mario Monicelli, Francis Ford Coppola (Oscar for best original score for The Godfather Part II (1974)), King Vidor, René Clément, Edward Dmytryk, and 'Eduardo de Filippo'. He also composed the music for many theatre productions by Visconti, Zefirelli, and de Filippo. In February of 1995, the Nino Rota Foundation was established at Fondazione Cini of Venice, Italy. Cini specializes in the works of 20th century Italian composers and includes the estate of Casella.- Composer
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Arthur B. Rubinstein was born on 31 March 1938 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was a composer, known for Stakeout (1987), WarGames (1983) and Nick of Time (1995). He was married to Barbara Ferris. He died on 23 April 2018 in the USA.- Composer
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Craig Safan was born on 17 December 1948 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He is a composer and writer, known for The Last Starfighter (1984), Cheers (1982) and Thief (1981).- Music Department
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Immensely talented, Argentinian born pianist, conductor and composer who has written over 100 scores for both television & the cinema including the memorable themes to Mission: Impossible (1966), Mannix (1967), Starsky and Hutch (1975), Cool Hand Luke (1967), and Bullitt (1968). Schifrin has regularly worked alongside Clint Eastwood (another jazz music aficionado) on numerous contributions including the themes to all the Dirty Harry films, plus Joe Kidd (1972) and Coogan's Bluff (1968). During his illustrious career, Schifrin has received four Grammy Awards, and has received six Oscar nominations.
Schifrin received his classical music training in both Argentina & France, and is a highly respected jazz pianist. On moving back to Buenos Aires in the mid 1950s, Schifrin formed his own big band, and was noticed by jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie, who asked him to become his pianist and arranger. Schifrin moved to the United States in 1958 and his career really began to take off. In addition to his jazz and cinema compositions, he has conducted the London Philarmonic Orchestra, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angelas Philarmonic, the Los Angelas Chamber Orchestra and many others.
Schifrin is one of the talented and significant contributors to film music over the past 40 years, and he continues to remain active with recent compositions for the Jackie Chan films Rush Hour (1998) and Rush Hour 2 (2001).- Music Department
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For nearly sixty years, John Scott has established himself as one of the finest composers working in films today, having collaborated with foremost producers and directors worldwide, including Richard Donner, Mark Damon, Hugh Hudson, Norman Jewison, Irvin Kershner, Daniel Petrie, Roger Spottiswoode and Charlton Heston, among others. He has been an essential voice in international scoring that thoroughly belies his occasional over-looked stature in the midst of 'brand name' composers.
Frequently associated with Hollywood's finest composers, including Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein and John Williams, John Scott has created a body of work that stands up as some of the finest music ever written for film.
Patrick John Michael O'Hara Scott was born in Bishopston, Bristol, England. John's musical abilities are not without precedence -- his father was a musician in the Bristol Police Band. And, like many children, John was given music lessons -- first on the violin and later on the clarinet.
When John was 14, he enrolled in the British Army as a Boy Musician in order to carry on his musical studies. He continued his study of the clarinet, and also studied harp. John went on to study the saxophone and became proficient enough that when he eventually left the military, he was able to find steady work touring with some of the top British bands of the era. Additional instruments included the vibraphone and flute, which subsequently afforded him international recognition as a Jazz flautist.
As time went on, people began to notice that John Scott had a unique ability as an arranger of music. He was hired by EMI, and began to arrange and conduct with some of EMIs top artists. John worked with The Beatles and their producer George Martin, and went on to record with noted artists and groups, including Tom Jones, Cilla Black, Matt Monro, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and The Hollies (John contributed as arranger and conductor to their mega-hits "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" and "Long Cool Woman [In a Black Dress]," among others). However, John was also a working, playing musician. He played with The Julian Bream Consort, Yehudi Menuhin, Ravi Shankar, Nelson Riddle, John Dankworth, Cleo Laine and many others.
In Barry Miles "The Beatles Diary Volume 1: The Beatles Years," it is noted that John holds the distinction of being the first musician to have been invited to be featured on their recordings, playing both alto and tenor flute on "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away."
In addition to working with others, in the 60s John was the leader of a popular jazz quintet and the noted Johnny Scott Trio, to include David Snell and Duncan Lamont. Melody Maker, the premier British Pop music paper of the 20th Century (1926-2000), issued an annual Jazz poll. In the 60s, John was ranked as the best flute player for five consecutive years, and among the top three for the ten-year period.
It was at this time that John started to play saxophone on film scores. He played principal sax for Henry Mancini -- who was a teacher and mentor in John's development as a film composer -- on The Pink Panther (1963), Charade (1963) and Arabesque (1966); and, was principal sax on John Barry's Goldfinger (1964) soundtrack, and flute on The Lion in Winter (1968) soundtrack. This exposure to film music whetted John's appetite for composing music for films.
His first score was for the film A Study in Terror (1965), James Hill, director. Since that 'big break,' John has gone on to score over seventy motion pictures over the years. His efforts have not gone unnoticed, for he is the recipient of four Emmy Awards and numerous industry recognitions of his work.
John has not limited his compositions to the silver screen; he has also composed many concert works including three symphonies, a ballet, an opera, chamber ensembles and string quartets, among numerous others. He has also conducted other film composers' work for release on CD, as well as having conducted most of the London orchestras, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra. Other European orchestras include the Prague Philharmonic, Münchner Symphoniker (Munich Symphony) and the Symfonický orchester Slovenského rozhlasu (Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra).
In May 2006, John conducted the inaugural concert of the The Hollywood Symphony Orchestra at the magnificent Royce Hall on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles. As founder, conductor and artistic director, it was a thrill of a lifetime. For the past 10 years, John has been possessed with an obsession for a deeper investigation into the heritage of film music. It is his goal to place the best of symphonic film music fairly and squarely alongside the accepted symphonic repertoire in major concert halls. He believes it is time that great composers of symphonic film music are given proper recognition.
As president of the The Hollywood Symphony Orchestra Society, John is developing programs to establish activities involving interaction between schools, the orchestra and a variety of multimedia projects, to help students explore and understand the concept and value of music for film. The Society will be holding special competitions in the area of film music composition, and providing mentoring from masters of the art, with grant winners performing their work on stage, to film, with a full orchestra.
John has also founded his own record company, JOS Records, Beverly Hills, California. JOS Records is unusual in that it is a label that is run by a composer, and that it releases the composer's own music. This is not unprecedented in the history of musical recordings -- e.g. Elmer Bernstein's Film Music Club, and some Stanyan recordings by Rod McKuen -- but not on this type of scale and for this length of time. JOS Records has released some 35 CDs since 1989! Film music fans are thankful that these scores, some of them quite obscure, have been released at all.
Additionally, John has launched a new Web site devoted to his own soundtrack label at www.JOSRecords.com, which contains exclusive content and all the latest news and information about his work.
On October 16, 2013, the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors in association with PRS for Music, honored John Scott with the prestigious Gold Badge Award, with a formal presentation at their 40th Award Ceremony. The Awards are presented annually to exceptional people from across the music industry for their contribution to Britain's music industry.
John is a resident of London, England and Los Angeles, California.- Music Department
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A great talent who started his career in Saturday Night Live (1975), where he worked with colleagues like Rob Reiner or Billy Crystal. He worked for some great stage values as Eric Clapton, Rosemary Clooney, Harry Connick Jr., Billy Crystal, Lauryn Hill, Jennifer Holliday, Nathan Lane, Jenifer Lewis, Darlene Love, Patti LuPone, Lonette McKee, Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short or Barbra Streisand. His first important score for cinema is Misery (1990) (directed by Rob Reiner) and then he scored movies for Ron Underwood (City Slickers (1991), Hearts and Souls (1995)), Billy Crystal (When Harry Met Sally... (1989), Mr. Saturday Night (1992), Forget Paris (1995)), Barry Sonnenfeld (The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993)), Sam Weisman (George of the Jungle (1997)) or Rob Reiner (Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), A Few Good Men (1992), North (1994), The American President (1995)).
Shaiman has raised a unique place in film music industry, with a great talent for musicals and songs, getting great reviews with his acclaimed scores for The American President (1995), Patch Adams (1998), Simon Birch (1998) or South Park (1997) (with wonderful songs). Shaiman won Grammy and Emmy Awards and the Tony Award for his musical, "Hairspray". He has been nominated for the Oscars and still works in musical stages and cinema scores. Shaiman has also appeared as an actor in some movies, many times paying the piano.- Composer
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Theodore Michael Shapiro is an American film composer from Washington D.C. who is known for composing various films such as Jennifer's Body, Old School, Safe Men, Idiocracy, Wet Hot American Summer, Zoolander 2, Year One, DodgeBall, Tropic Thunder, On the Ropes, 13 Going on 30, Girlfight, Captain Underpants and The Devil Wears Prada.- Music Department
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David Shire was born on 3 July 1937 in Buffalo, New York, USA. He is a composer and writer, known for Zodiac (2007), Short Circuit (1986) and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974). He has been married to Didi Conn since 11 February 1984. They have one child. He was previously married to Talia Shire.- Music Department
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Howard Shore is a Canadian composer, born in Toronto. He was born in a Jewish family. He started studying music when 8-years-old, and played as a member of bands by the time he was 13-years-old. He was interested in a professional career in music as a teenager. He studied music at the Berklee College of Music, a college of contemporary music located in Boston.
For a few years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Shore was a member of Lighthouse, a jazz fusion band. In the 1970s, Shore mainly composed music for theatrical performances and a few television shows. His most notable work was composing the music for the one-man-act show of stage magician Doug Henning. He also served as a musical director in then-new television show "Saturday Night Live" (1975-). He was hired by the show's producer Lorne Michaels, who was a close friend of Shore since their teen years.
In 1978, Shore started his career as a film score composer, with scoring the B-movie " I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses" (1978). His next film score was composed for the horror film "The Brood" (1979). Shore had a good working relationship with the film's director David Cronenberg. Cronenberg would continue to use Shore as the composer of most of his films, with the exception of "The Dead Zone" (1983).
In the 1980s, Shore also composed the film scores of works by other directors, such as "After Hours" (1985) by Martin Scorsese, and "Big" (1988) by Penny Marshall. He received more acclaim for composing the film score for "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991), a major hit of its era. Shore was nominated for a BAFTA award for this film score.
By the 1990s, Shore was an established composer of high repute and worked in an ever increasing number of films. Among his better known works were the film scores for comedy film "Mrs. Doubtfire" (1993) and crime thriller "Seven" (1995). Shore received even more critical acclaim in the 2000s, when he composed the film score for fantasy film "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001). He won an Academy Award and a Grammy for the film score, and received nominations for a BAFTA award and a Golden Globe.
Shore continued his career with the film scores of acclaimed films "Gangs of New York" (2002), "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" (2002), and "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (2003). He received his second Academy Award for the film score of "The Return of the King", and his third Academy Award as the composer of hit song "Into the West". He won several other major awards for these film scores. His film scores for "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy are considered the most famous and successful works of his career.
For the rest of the 2000s, Shore closely collaborated with director Martin Scorsese. Shore won a Golden Globe for the film score of Scorsese's "The Aviator" (2004). In the 2010s, Shore continues to work regularly, mostly known for composing film scores for works by directors David Cronenberg, Martin Scorsese, and Peter Jackson. He was the main composer for "The Hobbit" trilogy by Peter Jackson, and the fantasy film "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" (2010) by David Slade.- Composer
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Carlo Siliotto is a nominated and awarded Film composer.
Since 1984 he has written music for over a hundred projects, ranging from theatrical features to documentaries and television series. Carlo's ability to blend contemporary sounds with the melodic traditions of Italian film music has been a passport for working alongside many established directors.
Just to mention a few, in 2007 Carlo received a Golden Globe nomination for his work on Nomad: The Warrior (Bodrov-Passer), and in 2011 he was nominated by the Italian critics for the "Nastro d'Argento" for the music of Il Padre e lo Straniero (Tognazzi). In 2004 was nominated for Best Music by the International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA) for The Punisher (Jonathan Henslegh} In 2014 was awarded with Premio Colonne Sonore for the movie No Se Aceptan Devoluciones (Eugenio Derbez}
Carlo pursued formal studies in composition at the Conservatory of Frosinone and was among the founders of the popular group Canzoniere del Lazio.
In addition to his work for the silver screen, Carlo is a prolific composer of concert music.
In 2018 has become a proud member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.- Composer
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In his ongoing, decades-long career as a composer, Alan Silvestri has blazed an innovative trail with his exciting and melodic scores, winning the applause of Hollywood and movie audiences the world over. With a credit list of over 100 films Silvestri has composed some of the most recognizable and beloved themes in movie history. His efforts have been recognized with two Oscar nominations, two Golden Globe nominations, three Grammy awards, two Emmy awards, and numerous International Film Music Critics Awards, Saturn Awards, and Hollywood Music In Media Awards.
Born in New York City and raised in Teaneck, New Jersey, Silvestri first dreamed of becoming a jazz guitar player. After spending two years at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, he hit the road as a performer and arranger. Landing in Hollywood at the age of 22, he found himself successfully composing the music for 1972's "The Doberman Gang" which established his place in the world of film composing.
The 1970s witnessed the rise of energetic synth-pop scores, establishing Silvestri as the action rhythmatist for TV's highway patrol hit "CHiPs." This action driven score caught the ear of a young filmmaker named Robert Zemeckis, whose hit film, 1984's "Romancing the Stone," was the perfect first date for the composer and director. It's success became the basis of a decades long collaboration that continues to this day. Their numerous collaborations have taken them through fascinating landscapes and stylistic variations, from the "Back to the Future" trilogy to the jazzy world of Toontown in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" the tension filled rooms of "What Lies Beneath" and "Death Becomes Her", to the cosmic wonder of "Contact;" the emotional isolation of "Castaway", to the magic of the "Polar Express". But perhaps no film collaboration defines their creative relationship better than Zemeckis' 1994 Best Picture winner, "Forrest Gump", for which Silvestri's gift for melodically beautiful themes earned him an Oscar and Golden Globe nomination and the affection of film music lovers everywhere. This 35 year, 21 film collaboration includes such recent films as "Flight", "Allied" and most recently "Welcome To Marwen". Zemeckis and Silvestri are currently working on "The Witches" based on Roald Dahl's 1973 classic book scheduled for release in October of 2020.
Though the Zemeckis/Silvestri collaboration is legendary, Silvestri has scored films of every imaginable style and genre. His energy has brought excitement and emotion to the hard-hitting orchestral scores for Steven Spielberg's "Ready Player One", James Cameron's "The Abyss" as well as "Predator" and "The Mummy Returns." Alan's diversity is on full display in family entertainment films such as "The Father of the Bride 1 and 2", "Parent Trap", "Stuart Little 1 and 2", Disney's "Lilo and Stitch", "The Croods" as well as "Night at the Museum 1, 2 and 3" while his passion for melody fuels the romantic emotion of films like "The Bodyguard" and "What Women Want".
Most recently, Alan has composed the music for Marvel's "Avengers: Endgame." The film is the culmination of a partnership with Marvel that began in 2011 with Alan's dynamically heroic score for "Captain America: The First Avenger" followed by "Avengers". Since 2011 Alan's collaboration with Marvel helped propel "The Avengers" and "Avengers: Infinity War" to spectacular world-wide success.
Silvestri's success has also crossed into the world of songwriting. His partnership with Six-Time Grammy Award winner Glen Ballard has produced hits such as the Grammy-winning and Oscar-nominated song "Believe" (Josh Groban) for "The Polar Express", "Butterfly Fly Away" (Miley Cyrus) for "Hannah Montana The Movie", "God Bless Us Everyone" (Andrea Bocelli) for "A Christmas Carol" and "A Hero Comes Home" (Idina Menzel) for "Beowulf".
Alan and his wife Sandra are long time residents of California's central coast. In 1998 the Silvestri family embarked on a new venture as the founders of Silvestri Vineyards. Their wines show that lovingly cultivated fruit has a music all its own. "There's something about the elemental side of winemaking that appeals to me," he says. "Both music making and wine making involve a magical blending of art and science. Just as each note brings it own voice to the melody, each vine brings it's own unique personality to the wine."
Their other great passion is the ongoing search for the cure to Type 1 Juvenile Diabetes. With the diagnosis of their son at two years of age (now 29) they continue to work the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and dream of the day this disease (and all of the suffering it brings to so many) will finally become a thing of the past.- Composer
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Carl Stalling is the most famous unknown composer of the 20th century, almost solely based on his work composing musical scores for animated cartoons. Stalling's first work in music was as house organist in Newman Theatre in Kansas City, where he would accompany the latest silent film with his organ playing. He soon came to the attention of fellow Kansan Walt Disney, who recruited Stalling as musical director for his fledgling animation company. At Disney, Stalling invented the "tick" method, a timing device that allows animators to set the tempo of the cartoons, so that the musicians can play along before the cartoon is even drawn! Stalling created the music for Disney's early "Silly Symphonies", including The Skeleton Dance (1929). Stalling left Disney in 1930 to join the new animation group at Warner Brothers. The advantage for Stalling was that he now had access to Warner's enormous library of popular songs, which he began to employ as a sort of musical pun. For example, any scene showing someone freezing would be accompanied by a bit of "Am I Blue?", or any shot of a country bumpkin would be followed by a few bars of "Arkansas Traveller." Stalling's main source of musical inspiration, however, were the works of Raymond Scott; Scott's "Powerhouse" theme is forever linked with Stalling's work for Warners. Stalling was a quiet man, granting only one interview about his work (for "Funnyworld" magazine). For a better appreciation of his work, fans should get the two "Stalling Projects" CDs.- Composer
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Composer, conductor, pianist and author Ronald Stein was educated at Washington University (BA), the Yale School of Music and the University of Southern California. In college he wrote musical shows. He was named the assistant musical director for the St. Louis Municipal Opera in 1950, 1951 and 1954. He served in the US Army Special Services at Fort Dix, NJ, from 1952-1954. Reurning home, he became the piano soloist for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in 1955. From that year to 1959 he was the music director of American-International Pictures, and in 1964 became the associate musical director for Phoenix Star. He joined ASCAP in 1956 and his popular compositions include "Raymie"; "Mexico City"; "Romantic Idyll"; and "The Garden", plus the film themes for Dime with a Halo (1963), The Littlest Hobo (1958) and Of Love and Desire (1963).- Music Department
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Mort Stevens got his start in the 1950s as Sammy Davis Jr.'s arranger and conductor. He then went into composing various scores for network television, as well as becoming music supervisor for CBS in the 1960s. His many fine television scores include, "Hawaii Five-O" (Emmy winner), "Police Woman" and "Gunsmoke." He also scored some mini-series, including, "Masada" (1981) and "Wheels" (1978) (he received Emmy nominations for his work on these two productions). Just before his passing in November, 1991, he was arranging music for John Williams and the Boston Pops and was Music Director for Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, Liza Minnelli and Dean Martin concerts in the late 1980s. His contribution to television music is considered some of the finest and only lets one appreciate the art all the more.- Music Department
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Richard Stone was born on 27 November 1953 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was a composer, known for Witness (1985), Animaniacs (1993) and Platoon (1986). He died on 9 March 2001 in West Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Composer
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Frédéric Talgorn was born on 3 July 1961 in Toulouse, France. He is a composer, known for Fortress (1992), Asterix at the Olympic Games (2008) and Robot Jox (1989).- Music Department
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Brian Theodore Tyler is an American composer, conductor, arranger and producer known for his film, television and video game scores. In his 24-year career, he has scored Transformers: Prime, Eagle Eye, The Expendables trilogy, Iron Man 3, Avengers: Age of Ultron with Danny Elfman, Now You See Me, and Crazy Rich Asians, among others. He also re-arranged the current fanfare of the Universal Pictures logo, originally composed by Jerry Goldsmith, for Universal Pictures' 100th anniversary, which debuted with The Lorax (2012). He composed the 2013-2016 Marvel Studios logo, which debuted with Thor: The Dark World (2013), which he also composed the film's score. He composed the NFL Sunday Countdown Theme for ESPN and the Formula One theme (also used in Formula 2 and Formula 3). He scored seven installments of the Fast & Furious franchise, and the soundtrack for the Paramount TV series Yellowstone. For his work as a film composer, he won the Ifcma Awards 2014 Composer of the Year. His composition for the film Last Call earned him the first of three Emmy nominations, a gold record, and induction into the music branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. As of November 2017, his films have grossed $12 billion worldwide, putting him in the top 10 highest-grossing film composers of all time.- Composer
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Fernando Velázquez (Getxo, 1976) is a composer of music for film, television and theatre, a creator of concerto music, a cellist and an orchestra conductor.
The soundtrack genre has allowed him to bring symphonic music to mass audiences and, above all, to explore very different expressive and narrative possibilities, from fantasy films to drama and comedy.
He has composed award-winning and memorable soundtracks for films including all those by J.A. Bayona, such as El orfanato (The Orphanage), The Impossible and Un monstruo viene a verme (A Monster Calls), the latter of which was awarded the Goya for Best Original Score in 2017. He also composed the music for some of the highest-grossing films in Spanish cinema's history, such as Ocho apellidos vascos (Spanish Affair), Los ojos de Julia (Julia's Eyes), El silencio de la ciudad blanca (The Silence of the White City), Contratiempo (The Invisible Guest) and series such as Patria, El inocente (The Innocent) and the upcoming Alma, among others. His Hollywood experience includes films such as Guillermo del Toro's The Scarlet Summit and M. Night Shyamalan's The Evil Trap. He was asked by Wim Wenders to score his 2017 film Submergence. He has also enjoyed a significant and award-winning career as a classical musician and composer. Among his more than 250 symphonic compositions, the record release of 'Viento' is a particular highlight. It is also worth mentioning Humanity at Music, a cantata translated into several languages which has become the international anthem of cooperativism. It is part of an inter-cooperative artistic project bringing together artistic disciplines such as music, storytelling, singing, illustration, theatre and dance. Also of note is Concierto para trombón y orquesta (Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra), recorded by Ximo Vicedo and Euskadiko Orkestra in 2020. As a conductor, he has led London's Philharmonia, the London Metropolitan, the Czech National Orchestra, the Budapest Radio Orchestra, and the symphony orchestras of RTVE, Bilbao, Euskadi, Extremadura, Galicia, Comunidad de Madrid, Navarra, Murcia, Principado de Asturias and Seville, among others. As an arranger, he has worked on orchestral arrangements of pieces by other composers, such as a version of the famous Cántico espiritual by Amancio Prada, based on the poems of San Juan de la Cruz, or his collaboration on Jorge Drexler's latest album, Tinta y tiempo, among many others.- Music Department
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Shirley Walker was born in Napa, California in 1945. She was educated at Pleasant Hill High School; attended San Francisco State College on piano scholarship; studied composition with Dr. Roger Nixon; and piano with Harald Logan of Berkeley, California. She was soloist with San Francisco Symphony while in high school; performed with various hotel, jazz & art bands in San Francisco, 1964 - 1967.
Industrial film and jingles work 1967 - 1978. Oakland Symphony Orchestra pianist 2 seasons, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra pianist 2 seasons. Member American Federation of Musicians (AFM) 1962 - present Member National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS) 1978 - present; Member American Society of Composers Authors & Publishers (ASCAP) 1980 - present; Member Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS) 1987 - present; Awards Committee 1987 - 1988; Member Society of Composers & Lyricists (SCL) 1985 - present; Vice President 1988 - 1992; Board of Directors 1986 - 1994; Working Conditions Committee 1987 - 1989; author SCL Working Conditions Questionnaire; author for The Score, SCL periodical: Packaging Scores, The Business of Quality Orchestration, New Low Budget Film Rate, Assumption Agreements and the Special Payments Fund. Member Recording Musicians Association (RMA) 1990 - present, Board of Directors 1994 - present; Member Broadcast Music Inc., (BMI) 1993 - present; Member Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS) 1994 - present; Executive Music Branch Committee 1994 - present.
She married Don Walker in 1967 and they had two sons, Colin born 1970, Ian born 1972.- Music Department
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Franz Waxman (Wachsmann) pursued his dream of a career in music despite his family's misgivings. He worked for several years as a bank teller and paid for piano, harmony and composition lessons with his salary. He later moved to Berlin, where he continued his study and progress as a musician. He was able to support himself by playing and arranging for a popular German jazz band, Weintraub Syncopaters, in the late 1920s. Friedrich Hollaender, who had written some music for the Weintraubs, gave Waxman his first chance to move into movie scoring by hiring him to orchestrate and conduct Hollander's score (an arrangement of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) for the film that launched Marlene Dietrich, The Blue Angel (1930), directed by Josef von Sternberg. During 1932 Waxman, a Jew, joined many other Jews leaving Germany as the Nazi vise closed irrevocably on free society. He continued working with Germanfilm makers in France. Waxman did musical arranging and co-scoring, usually with Allan Gray, for approximately 15 European movies (his first independent score was in 1932). "The Blue Angel" producer Erich Pommer liked Waxman's work and offered him the composing job for Liliom (1934), directed by Fritz Lang in France.
Pommer decided to do Music in the Air (1934), a Jerome Kern musical, which meant going to Hollywood. Waxman was asked to come along to do the arranging. Needing no further reason to remain in Europe as the Nazi clouds darkened over it, Waxman began a new chapter in Hollywood film music history. He fortunately had some spare time to study with 'Arnold Schoenberg' after coming to Los Angeles, but he was soon talking to another new arrival, English director James Whale, about scoring Bride of Frankenstein (1935) for Universal. Waxman gave Whale what he wanted--an unusual score to fit the quirky, somewhat over-the-top content of the film (in fact, some of this score was later used in other films). As Waxman worked for Universal through the 1930s, he found himself in assembly-line mode, sometimes sharing scoring credit, and doing a lot of arranging stock music, which was usually used for the studio's many serials. This cranked up Waxman's yearly film output to around 20 or so through 1940.
By 1940, however, he was composing original music scores for other studios, beginning with the romantic music for Selznick Studios' Rebecca (1940)--the first Hollywood film for Alfred Hitchcock--and whimsical fare for MGM's The Philadelphia Story (1940). In 1941 he was doing more work for MGM with Honky Tonk (1941) and his second Hitchcock score, Suspicion (1941) from RKO. By 1943 and for the rest of the decade Waxman was usually scoring for Warner Bros., starting with Destination Tokyo (1943) and including music for some of that studio's classics of the period, such as To Have and Have Not (1944) with Humphrey Bogart. Through the decade he was nominated for an Oscar seven times for Best Film Score.
Waxman moved on to Paramount through the first half of the 1950s and garnered his two Oscars in back--to-back wins for Sunset Boulevard (1950) and A Place in the Sun (1951). This recognition finally underscored what was at the heart of all of Waxman's music: seriously focused attention on relaying a film's story through the content of the music. He would continue his scoring work for several studios into the 1960s, with three more nominations. Some of his music in the 1950s was recycled from his previous scores, as in the case of his third assignment for Hitchcock, Rear Window (1954) which contained used music. Waxman was also active in contemporary classical music. In 1947 he founded the Los Angeles International Music Festival and, as Music Director and Conductor, brought the premieres of works by world renowned contemporary composers to the Los Angeles cultural scene. Among his own output of such music was his popular "Carmen Fantasy" for violin and orchestra. Waxman also composed for TV's Gunsmoke (1955), The Fugitive (1963), Peyton Place (1964) (he had composed the music for the film the series was based on, Peyton Place (1957)) and others. Waxman died relatively young, but because of his steady output, only fellow emigrant Max Steiner (who was nearly 20 years older and whose output entailed more than 200 arrangements of stock music, rather than original scores) was a more prolific early Hollywood composer.- Music Department
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As one of the best known, awarded, and financially successful composers in US history, John Williams is as easy to recall as John Philip Sousa, Aaron Copland or Leonard Bernstein, illustrating why he is "America's composer" time and again. With a massive list of awards that includes over 52 Oscar nominations (five wins), twenty-odd Gold and Platinum Records, and a slew of Emmy (two wins), Golden Globe (three wins), Grammy (25 wins), National Board of Review (including a Career Achievement Award), Saturn (six wins), American Film Institute (including a Lifetime Achievement Award) and BAFTA (seven wins) citations, along with honorary doctorate degrees numbering in the teens, Williams is undoubtedly one of the most respected composers for Cinema. He's led countless national and international orchestras, most notably as the nineteenth conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra from 1980-1993, helming three Pops tours of the US and Japan during his tenure. He currently serves as the Pop's Conductor Laureate. Also to his credit is a parallel career as an author of serious, and some not-so-serious, concert works - performed by the likes of Mstislav Rostropovich, André Previn, Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Gil Shaham, Leonard Slatkin, James Ingram, Dale Clevenger, and Joshua Bell. Of particular interests are his Essay for Strings, a jazzy Prelude & Fugue, the multimedia presentation American Journey (aka The Unfinished Journey (1999)), a Sinfonietta for Winds, a song cycle featuring poems by Rita Dove, concerti for flute, violin, clarinet, trumpet, tuba, cello, bassoon and horn, fanfares for the 1984, 1988 and 1996 Summer Olympics, the 2002 Winter Olympics, and a song co-written with Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman for the Special Olympics! But such a list probably warrants a more detailed background...
Born in Flushing, New York on February 8, 1932, John Towner Williams discovered music almost immediately, due in no small measure to being the son of a percussionist for CBS Radio and the Raymond Scott Quintet. After moving to Los Angeles in 1948, the young pianist and leader of his own jazz band started experimenting with arranging tunes; at age 15, he determined he was going to become a concert pianist; at 19, he premiered his first original composition, a piano sonata.
He attended both UCLA and the Los Angeles City College, studying orchestration under MGM musical associate Robert Van Eps and being privately tutored by composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, until conducting for the first time during three years with the U.S. Air Force. His return to the states brought him to Julliard, where renowned piano pedagogue Madame Rosina Lhevinne helped Williams hone his performance skills. He played in jazz clubs to pay his way; still, she encouraged him to focus on composing. So it was back to L.A., with the future maestro ready to break into the Hollywood scene.
Williams found work with the Hollywood studios as a piano player, eventually accompanying such fare such as the TV series Peter Gunn (1958), South Pacific (1958), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as well as forming a surprising friendship with Bernard Herrmann. At age 24, "Johnny Williams" became a staff arranger at Columbia and then at 20th Century-Fox, orchestrating for Alfred Newman and Lionel Newman, Dimitri Tiomkin, Franz Waxman, and other Golden Age notables. In the field of popular music, he performed and arranged for the likes of Vic Damone, Doris Day, and Mahalia Jackson... all while courting actress/singer Barbara Ruick, who became his wife until her death in 1974. John & Barbara had three children; their daughter is now a doctor, and their two sons, Joseph Williams and Mark Towner Williams, are rock musicians.
The orchestrating gigs led to serious composing jobs for television, notably Alcoa Premiere (1961), Checkmate (1960), Gilligan's Island (1964), Lost in Space (1965), Land of the Giants (1968), and his Emmy-winning scores for Heidi (1968) and Jane Eyre (1970). Daddy-O (1958) and Because They're Young (1960) brought his original music to the big theatres, but he was soon typecast doing comedies. His efforts in the genre helped guarantee his work on William Wyler's How to Steal a Million (1966), however, a major picture that immediately led to larger projects. Of course, his arrangements continued to garner attention, and he won his first Oscar for adapting Fiddler on the Roof (1971).
During the '70s, he was King of Disaster Scores with The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Earthquake (1974) and The Towering Inferno (1974). His psychological score for Images (1972) remains one of the most innovative works in soundtrack history. But his Americana - particularly The Reivers (1969) - is what caught the ear of director Steven Spielberg, then preparing for his first feature, The Sugarland Express (1974). When Spielberg reunited with Williams on Jaws (1975), they established themselves as a blockbuster team, the composer gained his first Academy Award for Original Score, and Spielberg promptly recommended Williams to a friend, George Lucas. In 1977, John Williams re-popularized the epic cinema sound of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman and other composers from the Hollywood Golden Age: Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) became the best selling score-only soundtrack of all time, and spawned countless musical imitators. For the next five years, though the music in Hollywood changed, John Williams wrote big, brassy scores for big, brassy films - The Fury (1978), Superman (1978), 1941 (1979), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) ... An experiment during this period, Heartbeeps (1981), flopped. There was a long-term change of pace, nonetheless, as Williams fell in love with an interior designer and married once more.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) brought about his third Oscar, and The River (1984), Empire of the Sun (1987), The Accidental Tourist (1988) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989) added variety to the 1980s, as he returned to television with work on Amazing Stories (1985) and themes for NBC, including NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (1970). The '80s also brought the only exceptions to the composer's collaboration with Steven Spielberg - others scored both Spielberg's segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) and The Color Purple (1985).
Intending to retire, the composer's output became sporadic during the 1990s, particularly after the exciting Jurassic Park (1993) and the masterful, Oscar-winning Schindler's List (1993). This lighter workload, coupled with a number of hilarious references on The Simpsons (1989) actually seemed to renew interest in his music. Two Home Alone films (1990, 1992), JFK (1991), Nixon (1995), Sleepers (1996), Seven Years in Tibet (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Angela's Ashes (1999), and a return to familiar territory with Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) recalled his creative diversity of the '70s.
In this millennium, the artist shows no interest in slowing down. His relationships with Spielberg and Lucas continue in A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), the remaining Star Wars prequels (2002, 2005), Minority Report (2002), Catch Me If You Can (2002), and a promised fourth Indiana Jones film. There is a more focused effort on concert works, as well, including a theme for the new Walt Disney Concert Hall and a rumored light opera. But one certain highlight is his musical magic for the world of Harry Potter (2001, 2002, 2004, etc.), which he also arranged into a concert suite geared toward teaching children about the symphony orchestra. His music remains on the whistling lips of people around the globe, in the concert halls, on the promenades, in album collections, sports arenas, and parades, and, this writer hopes, touching some place in ourselves. So keep those ears ready wherever you go, 'cause you will likely hear a bit of John Williams on your way.- Composer
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One of the UK's most successful female music ambassadors, Debbie is in demand as a composer and conductor.
Over the past 25 years, there are probably few people in the UK who have not heard one of Debbie's film or television scores. Whether watching Stephen Fry bring Oscar Wilde to life on the big screen, hearing the latest political commentary on a Sunday morning with Andrew Marr, revelling in the Tudor world of Thomas Cromwell in "Wolf Hall" or marvelling as Mark Williams's Father Brown solves another audiences have revelled in Debbie's iconic themes of beauty and passion, love and laughter.
Debbie has won a TRIC Award for THE GOOD GUYS and an RTS Award for WARRIORS, and has been nominated for two Ivor Novello Awards for WILDE and DEATH OF YUGOSLAVIA. In 2016 she was awarded the Best Composer, Drama award for WOLF HALL at the RTS West Awards. She has appeared as Kirsty Young's castaway on Desert Island Discs, and as an expert guest on the TV broadcasts of The Proms. She has presented two series of Sounds And Sweet Airs - an exploration of the history of female composers - on Classic FM.
Debbie was one of 11 composers chosen to write "New Water Music" for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Pageant in 2012. She was also commissioned to compose the Overture and Finale music for the Queen's 90th Birthday Celebration in May 2016 and is the appointed composer of The Pageant at the Royal Windsor Horse Show.
Debbie is currently Classic FM's Composer in Residence. Her most recent album The Glorious Garden, a collaboration with Alan Titchmarsh, spent three weeks at number 1 in the UK Classical chart.
Debbie was commissioned to compose the signature music for Viking Cruises in 2016, and in March 2017 she was made Godmother to their river ship Viking Herja.
In the Queen's Birthday Honours List 2018 Debbie was appointed OBE for services to music.
In April 2019 Debbie accepted the post of President of Making Music - the first female President in the charity's history - and she is Patron of Soundabout, the charity which has pioneered the use of music, rhythm and sound to give disabled children a voice and a way to express themselves.
Debbie's most recent release - THE MYTHOS SUITE - a collaboration with Stephen Fry, was recorded at Abbey Road Studios with the National Symphony Orchestra and released by Decca Records in February 2020, achieving #1 in the UK Classical Music Charts.- Composer
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Emmy Award-winning composer Alex Wurman is highly versatile with a broad musical palette. He can traverse the film-score landscape by writing a critically-acclaimed score for an Oscar®-winning film, to supporting comedy with musical punctuation for box office giants, to capturing the essence of brainy ideas for indie films. Some examples include: the eerie piano melodies of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), minimalist/20th century sculpted sounds for Temple Grandin (2010), groovy '70's themes for Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), contemporary interpretations of French impressionism for 13 Conversations About One Thing (2001), and soulful melodies combined with ethereal orchestrations for March of the Penguins (2005). When asked to score another wildlife documentary, The Last Lions (2011) for Dereck Joubert and Beverly Joubert, Wurman wrote a score that won him his second award for "best music" at the world's leading natural history film forum: The Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival. Although known primarily for his work on films, when scoring major telefilms, such as Mrs. Harris (2005), or Bernard and Doris (2006), he is rewarded with Emmy recognition. Wurman's score for Temple Grandin (2010) starring Claire Danes won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special. Alex Wurman's talents are the result of both nature and nurture, hailing from a family with generations devoted to the study and performance of music. The Chicago native's father, Hans Wurman, was an arranger and composer, who pioneered the world of electronic music by recording intricate works on the first Moog synthesizer. As a youngster, Alex would spend afternoons at his father's workplace; his love for the arts would secure him admission into the prestigious Academy of Performing Arts High School. He went on to study composition at the University of Miami in Coral Gables and the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. In his early twenties, Wurman moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in film scoring. He immediately began scoring AFI student films. These valuable experiences proved to be the launching pad for Wurman's independent career. Soon thereafter, assignments came his way as directors discovered a fresh and versatile composer whose music lent depth to their films.
This cerebral composer is able to work with directors in many film genres. He especially develops a close relationship with writer/directors, such as Steve Conrad, John August, Jill Sprecher, and Ron Shelton; perhaps because Wurman's music, on its own, also tells a story. "He is a born storyteller whose work gets to the heart of the matter and expresses what words cannot. The music he creates is completely unique, complex and stunning," said Jill Sprecher, director of 13 Conversations About One Thing (2001). Ron Shelton (Play It to the Bone (1999), Hollywood Homicide (2003)) stated, "I don't think there is any kind of music in which he is not conversant." The Los Angeles Times wrote: "Wurman's spare, elegant score contributes strongly to creating and sustaining the film's shifting moods." Percy Adlon, director of Bagdad Cafe (1987) and The Glamorous World of the Adlon Hotel (1996) Adlon described Wurman's abilities by stating, "He has a wonderfully wide range of styles. You can travel with him from Schubert to Thelonius Monk, from Jamaican to Baroque, from noise to ballroom, from rich to sparse. He will never give you a cheap imitation. You always get an original."- Composer
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Composer Christopher Young was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. After graduating from Hampshire College in Massachusetts with a Bachelor of Arts degree in music, Young went on to pursue his post-graduate studies at North Texas State University. After college Christopher moved to Los Angeles, California. He was originally a jazz drummer, but decided to become a film composer instead after listening to some of Bernard Herrmann's work. Moreover, Young not only has studied with noted composer David Raksin at UCLA Film School, but also teaches at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. Christopher was honored with the prestigious Richard Kirk Award at the 2008 BMI Film and TV Awards.- Music Department
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German-born composer Hans Zimmer is recognized as one of Hollywood's most innovative musical talents. He featured in the music video for The Buggles' single "Video Killed the Radio Star", which became a worldwide hit and helped usher in a new era of global entertainment as the first music video to be aired on MTV (August 1, 1981).
Hans Florian Zimmer was born in Frankfurt am Main, then in West Germany, the son of Brigitte (Weil) and Hans Joachim Zimmer. He entered the world of film music in London during a long collaboration with famed composer and mentor Stanley Myers, which included the film My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). He soon began work on several successful solo projects, including the critically acclaimed A World Apart, and during these years Zimmer pioneered the use of combining old and new musical technologies. Today, this work has earned him the reputation of being the father of integrating the electronic musical world with traditional orchestral arrangements.
A turning point in Zimmer's career came in 1988 when he was asked to score Rain Man for director Barry Levinson. The film went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture of the Year and earned Zimmer his first Academy Award Nomination for Best Original Score. The next year, Zimmer composed the score for another Best Picture Oscar recipient, Driving Miss Daisy (1989), starring Jessica Tandy, and Morgan Freeman.
Having already scored two Best Picture winners, in the early 1990s, Zimmer cemented his position as a preeminent talent with the award-winning score for The Lion King (1994). The soundtrack has sold over 15 million copies to date and earned him an Academy Award for Best Original Score, a Golden Globe, an American Music Award, a Tony, and two Grammy Awards. In total, Zimmer's work has been nominated for 7 Golden Globes, 7 Grammys and seven Oscars for Rain Man (1988), Gladiator (2000), The Lion King (1994), As Good as It Gets (1997), The The Preacher's Wife (1996), The Thin Red Line (1998), The Prince of Egypt (1998), and The Last Samurai (2003).
With his career in full swing, Zimmer was anxious to replicate the mentoring experience he had benefited from under Stanley Myers' guidance. With state-of-the-art technology and a supportive creative environment, Zimmer was able to offer film-scoring opportunities to young composers at his Santa Monica-based musical "think tank." This approach helped launch the careers of such notable composers as Mark Mancina, John Powell, Harry Gregson-Williams, Nick Glennie-Smith, and Klaus Badelt.
In 2000, Zimmer scored the music for Gladiator (2000), for which he received an Oscar nomination, in addition to Golden Globe and Broadcast Film Critics Awards for his epic score. It sold more than three million copies worldwide and spawned a second album Gladiator: More Music From The Motion Picture, released on the Universal Classics/Decca label. Zimmer's other scores that year included Mission: Impossible II (2000), The Road to El Dorado (2000), and An Everlasting Piece (2000), directed by Barry Levinson.
Some of his other impressive scores include Pearl Harbor (2001), The Ring (2002), four films directed by Ridley Scott; Matchstick Men (2003), Hannibal (2001), Black Hawk Down (2001), and Thelma & Louise (1991), Penny Marshall's Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), and A League of Their Own (1992), Tony Scott's True Romance (1993), Tears of the Sun (2003), Ron Howard's Backdraft (1991), Days of Thunder (1990), Smilla's Sense of Snow (1997), and the animated Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) for which he also co-wrote four of the songs with Bryan Adams, including the Golden Globe nominated Here I Am.
At the 27th annual Flanders International Film Festival, Zimmer performed live for the first time in concert with a 100-piece orchestra and a 100-voice choir. Choosing selections from his impressive body of work, Zimmer performed newly orchestrated concert versions of Gladiator, Mission: Impossible II (2000), Rain Man (1988), The Lion King (1994), and The Thin Red Line (1998). The concert was recorded by Decca and released as a concert album entitled "The Wings Of A Film: The Music Of Hans Zimmer."
In 2003, Zimmer completed his 100th film score for the film The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise, for which he received both a Golden Globe and a Broadcast Film Critics nomination. Zimmer then scored Nancy Meyers' comedy Something's Gotta Give (2003), the animated Dreamworks film, Shark Tale (2004) (featuring voices of Will Smith, Renée Zellweger, Robert De Niro, Jack Black, and Martin Scorsese), and Jim Brooks' Spanglish (2004) starring Adam Sandler and Téa Leoni (for which he also received a Golden Globe nomination). His 2005 projects include Paramount's The Weather Man (2005) starring Nicolas Cage, Dreamworks' Madagascar (2005), and the Warner Bros. summer release, Batman Begins (2005).
Zimmer's additional honors and awards include the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award in Film Composition from the National Board of Review, and the Frederick Loewe Award in 2003 at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. He has also received ASCAP's Henry Mancini Award for Lifetime Achievement. Hans and his wife live in Los Angeles and he is the father of four children.