Genius Film Composers (in no particular order)
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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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Jack Nitzsche was born on 22 April 1937 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a composer and actor, known for An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), The Exorcist (1973) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). He was married to Buffy Sainte-Marie and Gracia Ann May. He died on 25 August 2000 in Hollywood, California, USA.- 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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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.- Composer
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Michael Nyman studied piano, harpsichord and music history with Alan Bush at the Royal Academy of Music, and musicology with Thurston Dart at King's College, London. Between 1968 and 1978 he worked as a music critic and in 1977 he founded the Campiello Band, later renamed the Michael Nyman Band. Many of his filmscores were composed for the films of Peter Greenaway. He has also written several operas, ballet music and a large number of chamber and concert pieces.- Composer
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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.- 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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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.- 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".- 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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From his days as one of the pioneering icons of electronic music to his current status as a world-renowned legendary film composer, Mark Isham continues to be one of the most prolific and provocative artists on the scene. His gift for creating unforgettable melodies and his love of fresh, innovative sonic palettes have earned Isham many awards including a Grammy, an Emmy, and a Clio, in addition to multiple Grammy, Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for his material both as a composer and a recording artist. Most recently, Mark was honored by ASCAP with the Henry Mancini Award for Lifetime Achievement. Isham's musical signature is evident in his memorable scores for such notable films as Crash, awarded the Oscar for Best Picture in 2005 (Isham's score was named Best Soundtrack of 2005 by Cinescape.com), Bobby, nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Picture, and The Black Dahlia, with its critically lauded jazz noir soundtrack (awarded Best Score for a Drama Film 2007, and nominated for Best Score of the Year by the International Film Music Critics Association). Other highlights include Eight Below, The Cooler, A River Runs Through It, Blade, Nell, Men of Honor, and The Secret Life of Bees. His list of collaborators in film is a veritable who's who of the entertainment industry, Robert Redford, Tom Cruise, Brian De Palma, Chick Corea, Jodi Foster, Robert Altman, Sting, Wil.I.Am, Sydney Lumet, Mick Jagger and too many more to name. As a performing artist, Mark has added his unique sound, melodic, moody, sexy and cool, to a wide variety of genres. He has graced the albums of such diverse artists as Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, Ziggy Marley, Joni Mitchell, The Rolling Stones, Chris Isaak, and Van Morrison. His solo recordings span from electronica and classic jazz to hip-hop and ethnic world music, receiving worldwide critical acclaim including Grammy nominations for his albums Castalia and Tibet, and a win for his Virgin Records release, Mark Isham. No matter the genre, medium, or venue, Mark Isham displays a boundless ability to electrify the listener with his talent for crafting evocative new musical worlds.- 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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Stephen Oliver was born on 10 March 1950 in Chester, England, UK. He was a composer, known for The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988), Lady Jane (1986) and The West Wing (1999). He died on 29 April 1992 in London, England, UK.- Composer
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Trent Reznor is an American songwriter/musician/producer and sole member of multi-platinum act Nine Inch Nails, and now an Academy Award, Emmy and Grammy Award winning film composer. He began creating music as a child in Western Pennsylvania, first on piano and then taking up other instruments. He eventually moved to Cleveland, OH where he took a job at a local recording studio as an assistant engineer/janitor, recording his own material during unused studio time.
Those recordings became the first Nine Inch Nails album, 1989's Pretty Hate Machine. NIN soon developed a reputation as one of the best live acts in rock and joined the inaugural Lollapalooza tour in 1991. The Broken EP followed in 1992, garnering NIN's first Grammy Award (NIN has received twelve Grammy nominations and won two awards). In 1994, the breakthrough album The Downward Spiral was released and featured the radio hits "Closer" and "Hurt." The controversial music video for "Closer" was directed by Mark Romanek and is considered among the best music videos of all time having won various awards (it is one of the few music videos included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City). NIN's mud-covered appearance that Summer at Woodstock 1994 is now legendary. Also released that year was the Reznor produced soundtrack to Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994). He returned to film 3 years later, producing the soundtrack for David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997). In 1997, Reznor appeared on Time magazine's most influential people list, and Spin magazine named him "the most vital artist in music."
Five years later NIN's next album, The Fragile, was released - the double album debuted at number one. In 2002, "Hurt" was covered by Johnny Cash to critical acclaim; it was one of Cash's final hit releases before his death. NIN's next album, With Teeth, also reached number one in 2005 as did the single "The Hand That Feeds." Reznor broke new ground by posting the single's source tracks as a free download for fans to edit/remix/sample as they pleased and creating an online community for fans to share their creations. David Fincher directed the video for "Only," With Teeth's second single.
The concept album Year Zero was released in 2007 alongside an accompanying ARG (alternate reality game). Conceived by Trent Reznor and assisted in execution by 42 Entertainment, the ARG progressed through the album release and beyond, featuring no less than 29 websites, hidden messages within NIN merchandise, recordings and bar codes, hot lines, flier and poster campaigns, and even resistance cell "meetings" organized via calls made to pre-paid cell phones distributed to participants. Within two months, the ARG amassed 2.5 million cumulative site visits, 7.5 million cumulative page views and 2 million phone calls. Reznor has developed Year Zero into an HBO/BBC mini-series.
In 2008, free of contractual obligations, NIN released Ghosts I-IV, a 36-track instrumental album, NIN's first independent release. Soon after, a new studio album, The Slip, was released as a free digital download alongside a simple message: "Thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years - this one's on me" - TR (In less than a year, it exceeded 1.8M downloads). Ghosts I-IV and The Slip were both released under Creative Commons licenses allowing extensive use of the material within independent film projects. Following these two releases, NIN embarked on the acclaimed Lights In The Sky Tour featuring groundbreaking production effects, layering and programming that allowed the performers to interact and control aspects of the show's visuals. The tour was recognized by the industry as one of the top-ten most creative tours of all time.
Over the course of his career, Reznor has also collected countless production and remix credits including collaborations with David Bowie, producing Saul Williams and the discovery and production of Marilyn Manson.
In 2010, Reznor composed his first film score; for David Fincher's masterwork The Social Network (2010). The score won the Academy Award for best score and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score. Additionally, he received a Critics' Choice Movie Award and a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for best score. He also scored Fincher's next film, the highly anticipated The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011).
In addition to his continued work in Nine Inch Nails, Reznor is recording new music as a member of the group How to Destroy Angels.- Composer
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Atticus Ross was born on 16 January 1968 in England, UK. He is a composer and actor, known for The Social Network (2010), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) and Mank (2020). He has been married to Claudia Sarne since 2001. They have three children.- Music Department
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Austrian composer Max Steiner achieved legendary status as the creator of hundreds of classic American film scores. He was born Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner in Vienna, Austria, the son of Marie Mizzi (Hasiba) and Gabor Steiner, an impresario, and the grandson of actor and theater director and manager Maximilian Steiner. His family was Jewish. As a child, he was astonishingly musically gifted, composing complex works as a teenager and completing the course of study at Vienna's Hochschule fuer Musik und Darstellende Kunst in only one year, at the age of sixteen. He studied under Gustav Mahler and, before the age of twenty, made his living as a conductor and as composer of works for the theater, the concert hall, and vaudeville. After a brief sojourn in Britian, Steiner moved to the USA in the same wave as fellow film composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold and quickly became a sought-after orchestrator and conductor on Broadway, bringing the Western classical tradition in which he had been raised to mainstream audiences.
He was soon snatched up by the film studios with the advent of sound and helped the fledgling talkies become musically sophisticated within a brief few years. He was one of the first to fully integrate the musical score with the images on-screen and to score individual scenes for their content and create leitmotifs for individual characters, as opposed to simply providing vaguely appropriate mood music, as evidenced in King Kong (1933), which set the standard for American film music for years to come.
From the 1930s to the 1960s, he was one of the most respected, innovative, and brilliant composers of American film music, creating a truly staggering number of exceptional scores for films of all types. He was nominated for Academy Awards for his scores eighteen times and won three times. Years after his death in 1971, he remains one of the giants of motion picture history, and his music still thrives.- 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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Michael Gore was born on 5 March 1951 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He is a composer and producer, known for Pretty in Pink (1986), Fame (1980) and Footloose (1984).- Composer
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Phillip Western is known for Fetching Cody (2005) and Girl Racers (2005).- 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.- Music Department
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Lionel Newman was the youngest of a triumvirate of accomplished virtuosos, composers and conductors, who dominated the music department at 20th Century Fox for more than four decades. Already a highly regarded pianist by the age of 15, Lionel went on the national vaudeville circuit as accompanist for Mae West, before joining his siblings, Alfred and Emil, on the West Coast. He completed his music studies under Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco in Los Angeles and, by 1934, fronted his own musical ensemble, 'Newman's Society Orchestra', aboard the luxury cruise ship SS Rotterdam on the Holland-America Line.
Under the tutelage of older brother Alfred (who headed the music department at 20th Century Fox from 1939-60), Lionel gradually broke into the movie business. He was first commissioned to write the title song for the modern western, The Cowboy and the Lady (1938). For this, he shared an Oscar-nomination for Best Song with lyricist Arthur Quenzer. In 1942, Lionel was hired by Fox as rehearsal pianist and songwriter. He scored his first major hit in 1948 with the standard "Again" (written for the movie Road House (1948)), which rode high in the Hit Parade, and was covered by many top stars of the day, including Mel Tormé, Doris Day, Vera Lynn and Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra.
By the early 50's, Lionel was receiving more prestigious assignments, both as musical director and as composer. From the time they first worked together on Don't Bother to Knock (1952), he struck up a close working relationship (and subsequent friendship) with fellow Fox contract player Marilyn Monroe. He became her favorite conductor on some of her best films, including Niagara (1953) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). He also wrote the title song for River of No Return (1954) (with lyrics by Ken Darby), plus another piece from the movie, "Down in the Meadow" - both sung by Marilyn. Other notable films he worked on over the years, include North to Alaska (1960), Cleopatra (1963), The Sand Pebbles (1966) and Alien (1979). Among his compositions are the theme for The Proud Ones (1956) (with pre-Spaghetti western whistling) and (as co-writer with brother Alfred) the stirring opening theme for the gritty revenge western The Bravados (1958), starring Gregory Peck.
Following Alfred's departure from Fox in 1959, Lionel was promoted to music director, then to vice president in charge of feature and television music. During the following decade, he supervised the majority of musical segments at the studio, in addition to composing some classic TV music, such as the jazz-tinged theme from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959). In 1969, Lionel won an Oscar (shared with Lennie Hayton) for Best Score of a Musical Picture for Hello, Dolly! (1969). The following year, Alfred died and Lionel took over the mantle of general director of music at Fox, a position he held until his own departure in 1985. He subsequently joined MGM/United Artists in a similar executive capacity for the remaining years of his life.
Known for his consummate perfectionism, as well as his often raucous sense of humor, Lionel was greatly respected by his peers and appreciated by up-and -coming film composers. A scholarship for young classical conductors is named in his honor.- Music Department
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Alfred Newman is an American composer, arranger, and conductor of film music.
From his start as a music prodigy, he came to be regarded as a respected figure in the history of film music. He won nine Academy Awards and was nominated 45 times, contributing to the Newmans being the most nominated Academy Award extended family, with a collective 92 nominations in various music categories.
In a career spanning more than four decades, Newman composed the scores for over 200 motion pictures. Some of his most famous scores include All About Eve (1950), Anastasia (1956), Wuthering Heights (1939), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Song of Bernadette (1943), Captain from Castile (1947), Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), How the West Was Won (1962), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and his final score, Airport (1970), all of which were nominated for or won Academy Awards. He is perhaps best known for composing the fanfare which accompanies the studio logo at the beginning of 20th Century Fox's productions.
Newman was highly regarded as a conductor, and arranged and conducted many scores by other composers, including George Gershwin, Charles Chaplin, and Irving Berlin. He also conducted the music for many film adaptations of Broadway musicals (having worked on Broadway for ten years before coming to Hollywood), as well as many original Hollywood musicals.
He was among the first musicians to compose and conduct original music during Hollywood's Golden Age of movies, later becoming a respected and powerful music director in the history of Hollywood.- Music Department
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James Horner began studying piano at the age of five, and trained at the Royal College of Music in London, England, before moving to California in the 1970s. After receiving a bachelor's degree in music at USC, he would go on to earn his master's degree at UCLA and teach music theory there. He later completed his Ph.D. in Music Composition and Theory at UCLA. Horner began scoring student films for the American Film Institute in the late 1970s, which paved the way for scoring assignments on a number of small-scale films. His first large, high-profile project was composing music for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), which would lead to numerous other film offers and opportunities to work with world-class performers such as the London Symphony Orchestra. With over 75 projects to his name, and work with people such as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Oliver Stone, and Ron Howard, Horner firmly established himself as a strong voice in the world of film scoring. In addition, Horner composed a classical concert piece in the 1980s, called "Spectral Shimmers", which was world premiered by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Horner passed away in a plane crash on June 22, 2015, two months short of his 62nd birthday.- Actress
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Nancy Wilson was born in San Francisco, California and joined her sister Ann Wilson in the Seattle, Washington based hard rock-band Heart in the early-seventies. She sang lead vocals on the number one-hit "These Dreams" and on the top-twenty hit "Stranded". Ann performed on "The Battle of Evermore" on the Soundtrack of the film Singles (1992) with "The Lovemongers", a spin-off band she and her sister (Ann Wilson) formed with 'Sue Ennis' and Frank Cox.- 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).- Composer
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The pioneering German collective Tangerine Dream has been delivering their distinctive style of ambient music for nearly three decades, laying down a foundation of sound textures and sonic imagery that has influenced many of today's electronic musicians. Founded in 1967 by fine art aficinado Edgar Froese the group released their first album, "Electronic Meditation" in 1970, and, through many different line-ups in proceeding years, delivered a unique brand of space-rock, making use of electronic instruments like synths and Mellotron, along traditional instruments like rock guitar and blues harmonica. Their work on William Friedkin's Sorcerer (1977) was the beginning of many film projects that the group would undertake throughout the 1980s, including Thief (1981) and The Keep (1983), both directed by Michael Mann, Legend (1985) by Ridley Scott, Near Dark (1987) by Kathryn Bigelow and the boxoffice hit Risky Business (1983) with Tom Cruise. Throughout the 1990s, the group has been as active as ever, releasing as many as five albums a year, including remastered versions of early material.- Composer
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Michael Convertino was born on 14 March 1952 in New York City, New York, USA. He is a composer, known for The Santa Clause (1994), Bull Durham (1988) and Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995).