Favorite Composers
My favorite is TV series music as compared to film.
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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).- Composer
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Composer, conductor, arranger, pianist and songwriter, the son of Morris Goldenberg. He was educated at Columbia College (BA), where he composed and arranged the Columbia Varsity Shows, and also Camp Tamiment. He took private music studies with Hall Overton and he wrote incidental music for the Broadway revue "An Evening With Mike Nichols & Elaine May", and arranged dance music for "Greenwillow", "110 in the Shade", and "High Spirits". His chief musical collaborator was songwriter (and author) Larry Alexander. He joined ASCAP in 1961, and his popular-song compositions include "Shouldn't There Be Lightning?"; and "Take You For Granted". His classical compositions include "Brass Quintet"; "Woodwind Quintet"; and "String Quartet".- Oliver Nelson was born on 27 June 2006 in England, UK. He is an actor, known for Hilda (2018), The Gathering (2024) and Home Fires (2015).
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A recording artist, song writer, jazz musician and composer, Gil Melle launched his career in the sixties. He first displayed his talent for art work and was also a regular jazz performer in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1969, Gil Melle displayed his musical talent for NBC's series "Night Gallery" and then composed scores for four of the "Columbo Mystery Films" for ABC and later did the chilling score for television's "Kolchak: The Night Stalker".
He also worked with major filmmakers including a young Steven Spielberg, for whom Melle scored his first two films "The Psychiatrist" and "Savage". With Larry Cohen, he composed a thundering score for "Bone" and next did the Sidney Poitier suspense thriller "The Organization" and ABC's motion picture "The Six Million Dollar Man".
After leaving television, Melle displayed his talents again for such major motion pictures including "The Manipulator", Warner Brothers' "The Ultimate Warrior" and Melle's best-known score for Universal Pictures, the 1971 science fiction thriller "The Andromeda Strain". Upon returning to television in the early eighties, he did NBC's "The Intruder Within" and later "The Case of the Hillside Stranglers", where Melle used lower-register instruments to create a chilling score.
Other films for the eighties include "Blood Beach", "The Last Chase" and "Hot Target". Melle's work has been recorded by The Toronto Symphony Orchestra, The New Zeland Symphony Orchestra, The Los Angeles Symphony and The National Philharmonic Orchestra of London. In all, he composed music for a remarkable 125 motion pictures.
In 1994, Gil Melle retired but still continued his talented work in both music and art until his passing in 2004.- Music Department
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Dick DeBenedictis was born on 23 January 1935 in New Milford, New Jersey, USA. He is a composer and actor, known for Matlock (1986), Police Story (1973) and Diagnosis Murder (1993).- 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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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
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Richard Shores was born on 9 May 1917 in Rockville, Indiana, USA. He was a composer, known for Hunter (1976), The Twilight Zone (1959) and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966). He died on 12 April 2001 in Encino, California, USA.- Composer
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Earle Hagen was born on 9 July 1919 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a composer and actor, known for I Spy (1965), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and Tango & Cash (1989). He was married to Laura Roberts (Gunn) and Lou Sidwell. He died on 26 May 2008 in Rancho Mirage, California, USA.- Music Department
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Dave Grusin was born on 26 June 1934 in Littleton, Colorado, USA. He is a composer and actor, known for The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), The Firm (1993) and The Graduate (1967). He was previously married to Edith Ruth Price, Sara Jane Tallman and Barbara Jo Davidson.- 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".- Composer
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Prolific singer, songwriter and composer Nico Fidenco was born in Rome as Domenico Colarossi on January 24, 1933. Signed to RCA in Rome in 1960, he had his first major hit as a singer with Legata ad un granello di sabbia. This became the first single to sell over a million copies in Italy. Soon after, Fidenco's beautiful rendition of Su nel cielo was chosen by the director Francesco Maselli for the soundtrack of his film Silver Spoon Set (1960). From then on, Fidenco followed in the footsteps of balladeer/cantautore Peppino Di Capri by recording in both English and Italian. Many of these recordings were covers of songs that featured prominently as motion picture themes, such as Exodus or Moon River (from Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). Though he never registered a win at the prestigious San Remo music festival, Fidenco nonetheless turned an impressive number of superb ballads. He reached the peak of his popularity and ranking high in the charts by the mid-60's with iconic songs like Goccia di mare, A casa d'Irene, Celestina, Come nasce un amore and Non è Vero.
By 1966, Fidenco had turned his attention to writing a plethora of scores for genre movies, ranging from spaghetti westerns (The Texican (1966), Dynamite Jim (1966), etc.) to horror (Zombie Holocaust (1980)), Japanese anime and sexploitation (notably, the Emanuelle series). His warm, melodious voice was still occasionally featured, as in the title song, La ballata del treno, for the western Bandidos. Along with Jimmy Fontana, Riccardo Del Turco and Gianni Meccia, Fidenco co-founded a nostalgic vocal quartet (Super Quattro) in 1984, giving live performances (and releasing a trio of albums) of their respective 60's hits, updated with modern arrangements. The group disbanded in 1994. Fidenco himself retired in 2014 but his distinctive - very evocatively 1960s -- music can still be heard in films like Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019).
Fidenco was married to the actress Anna Maria Surdo from 1969 until his death in November 2022.- 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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Robert Prince was born on 10 May 1929 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a composer, known for Annabelle Comes Home (2019), The Name of the Game (1968) and J.D.'s Revenge (1976). He died on 4 March 2007 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Music Department
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Carlo Savina was born on 2 August 1919 in Turin, Piedmont, Italy. He was a composer and actor, known for The Brothers Bloom (2008), Sixteen Candles (1984) and The Godfather (1972). He died on 23 June 2002 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- 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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A three-time Oscar nominee, Jerry Fielding was among the boldest and most experimental of all Hollywood film composers. His music typically utilized advanced compositional procedures, producing dense, often richly dissonant orchestral textures, sometimes flavored with jazz. Fielding's film music career was marked by enduring and rewarding collaborations with Sam Peckinpah, Michael Winner and Clint Eastwood.
Born Joshua Feldman in Pittsburgh in 1922 to immigrant Russian parents, Jerry Fielding was brought up in a music-loving but non-musical household. As a home-bound, somewhat sickly teenager, Fielding derived early inspiration from the radio productions of Orson Welles, with their groundbreaking Bernard Herrmann scores. He was also fascinated by the increasingly advanced orchestrations being done for the swing bands of the time, with their heavy reliance on aspects of classical music. The young Fielding joined the studio of Max Adkins, the noted director of theatrical music who also included Henry Mancini and Murray Gerson among his students. After picking up vital arranging skills, Fielding toured with some of the leading dance bands of the 1940s. This led to Hollywood, where his radio and television assignments included conducting and arranging for many of the most popular variety shows of the time, including those of Groucho Marx.
At this time the shadow of McCarthyism was looming over America and Fielding, a self-confessed "loud-mouthed crusader", found himself among its many victims. His hiring of black musicians for his television orchestra (unheard of in those days) brought criticism and threats. His progressive affiliations brought him to the attention of the FBI and HUAC. Despite his strong liberal beliefs, Fielding said that McCarthy's men were probably more interested in getting him to name Groucho Marx as a "fellow traveler". He took the Fifth Amendment and promptly found his Hollywood career in ruins. He eventually found employment in the safe haven of Las Vegas, where he became musical director for the stage shows of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Debbie Reynolds, Eddie Fisher and others. He also began recording the first of many pop and swing LPs, such as "Fielding's Formula", "Sweet With A Beat" and "Hollywood Brass".
The approach of the 1960s saw the end of McCarthyism and Fielding's return to Hollywood. In 1962, at the suggestion of his writer friend Dalton Trumbo, Fielding was hired by Otto Preminger for the film Advise & Consent (1962), a tale of political intrigue amid the halls of Washington, DC. It was a remarkable debut score that combined light orchestral lyricism with hints of the richer, almost ethereal textures of his later work. It was also drenched in Fielding's own brand of dark irony--a trademark of the composer.
Around this time Fielding, hungry to expand his compositional technique, enrolled as a student of the venerated composer and teacher Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, who, incidentally, had given similar instruction to Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams. More television work followed, including scores to Mission: Impossible (1966) and Star Trek (1966). In 1967 Fielding scored Noon Wine (1966), a contemporary western for television directed by Sam Peckinpah. It was the first in a legendary though sometimes tumultuous partnership. In 1969 came The Wild Bunch (1969). This landmark western was Peckinpah's and Fielding's breakthrough movie. The composer caught the weariness, dust, dirt and blood of a vanishing West in a rich underscore that interspersed sprightly action cues with wistful Mexican folk melodies and nostalgic, bittersweet dirges. However, as always, the nostalgia was tempered with Fielding's characteristically steely irony. It earned him his first Oscar nomination. A second came with Peckinpah's Straw Dogs (1971) in 1971. This controversial though somewhat garbled tale of the violence lurking within a meek man saw Fielding's music take a new direction. Inspired by Igor Stravinsky's "Histoire Du Soldat", and with a large orchestra supplying dense, yearning sound clusters, this remarkable work gives voice to both the characters' inner turmoil and the desolate Cornish landscapes of the film's setting.
Fielding provided another sensitive, beautifully forlorn score for Peckinpah's proxy self-portrait, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974). However, some Peckinpah collaborations were not so happy. Fielding's music for The Getaway (1972) was rejected in favor of a score by Quincy Jones. Then in 1973 Fielding backed out of working with Bob Dylan on the score for Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973).
Fielding's association with Michael Winner began in 1970 with Lawman (1971), for which the composer supplied an epic score tinged with jazz--something of a first for a western! Then followed the searing, impressionistic music for Chato's Land (1972), The Mechanic (1972) and Scorpio (1973). A standout score was for Winner's gothic melodrama, The Nightcomers (1971). This gave Fielding a chance to indulge his love of 19th-century baroque music. The composer considered it among his finest works. His final score for Winner was for The Big Sleep (1978). It was an admirable consummation of the composer's various techniques.
Clint Eastwood was well served by Fielding's scores to The Enforcer (1976) and The Gauntlet (1977). The composer responded to their hard-edged urban milieu with full-on jazz compositions that featured some of the best jazz players in the business. In 1976 Fielding received his third and final Oscar nomination for Eastwood's The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976).
Jerry Fielding was a man who fought hard to get his brand of music into films. He was not a glad-hander. He was an uncompromising artist who perhaps sacrificed many choice assignments by spurning easy, producer-friendly routes. These stances may have taken their toll on him. From the mid-'70s onwards, the composer endured a series of heart attacks. In 1980 he suffered a fatal heart seizure while in Canada scoring Funeral Home. He was 57 years old. Jerry Fielding had an innately humane approach to film scoring. He eschewed traditional "mickey-mousing" techniques (i.e., slavishly following every on-screen action). Rather, his music sought to mirror and illuminate the motivations and deepest inner lives of the characters. This it did with great compassion, beauty and sensitivity. Producer Gordon T. Dawson touchingly described Fielding's music as being " . . . like a man in a green suit walking in a forest."
And so it is.- 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.- Composer
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John Carl Parker was born in 1926. He is a composer, known for Maverick (1994), CHIPS (2017) and Trapper John, M.D. (1979).