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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.- Music Artist
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Benny Andersson was born in 1946 outside of Stockholm, Sweden. His father and grandfather both being musicians, Benny was introduced to the accordion at an early age. With little patience for conventional music lessons, Benny is known to pick up just about any instrument and play it with ease. After he left high school, he was invited to become a part of the popular Swedish beat group The Hep Stars, with whom he played for several successful years until the band disbanded in the late 1960s. While touring with the band, he met another young songwriter named Björn Ulvaeus, and the two released their own LP after the breakup of The Hep Stars. They were soon joined by their girlfriends, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog, in a touring act "Festfolket", which was not much of a success. This foursome would, however, find international stardom and astounding success under the moniker ABBA. During his years with ABBA, Benny co-wrote and co-produced the band's entire output as well as touring the world. After the band split he, along with Björn, wrote the music for Tim Rice's "Chess", which was a huge success. In recent years, Benny has divided his time between producing (for such successful Swedish performers as Josefin Nilsson) and his love for birds. More success followed with the premiere of he and Björn's latest musical, "Kristina från Duvemåla". Several concerts celebrating the contribution he and Bjorn have made to the music industry in Sweden have been staged in 1998.- Actor
- Composer
- Director
Stefan Valdobrev is a Bulgarian actor, composer, author and performer of songs, film director. Stefan Valdobrev was born on May 20, 1970 in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria. He graduated from the National Academy for Theatre and Film Art, Sofia, Bulgaria. In the early 90th Valdobrev have mainly with their songs become massive hits and make it extremely popular in the Bulgarian music scene, bringing his series of honors between them and two consecutive awards for the -good contractor in MM Television. However, for him the priority is his acting career and he took part in a large number of genres various performances raised by some of the most prominent Bulgarian filmmakers on the stages of the National Theater, Bulgarian Army's Theater, State Youth Theater, Theater "La Strada", Satirical Theater, Plovdiv Drama Theatre. At the same time Valdobrev showed continued interest in theater and film music, materialized in the writing of the scores for over 70 performances and 20 feature films and documentaries that won him recognition and professional prestige. In 2000, he got his first "Golden Rose" for the film debut for the soundtrack to the movie "Boarding for dogs." In 2008, he composed the music for the film "The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner". This movie has enviable number of international awards and reached the shortlist for "Best Foreign Language Film" of the American Academy Film "Oscar." At the beginning of the century, Stefan Valdobrev gradually moving away from the theater and music scene, and although still play in major productions such as "Much Ado About Nothing," "The Brothers Karamazov," "Master and Margarita", "Comedy servants" "Eurydice," "Suburb", "Hamlet machine", he decided to concentrate the efforts were mainly in the cinema. In 2004, he has made a strong debut in the film "Burning", directed by Stanimir Trifonov for which he received his second "Golden Rose", this time for Best Actor. In 2006, Valdobrev went to Prague, where he majored in film directing at the Czech Film Academy FAMU. After graduation, he worked on several short project videos and television spectacles. In 2010, he has made his directorial debut with the documentary "Manchester United from Svishtov," which enjoyed an impressive festival and television time; falls within the official selection or competition of some of the world's most prestigious cinema forums: in Amsterdam, Hot Docs Toronto, Sarajevo Film Festival, Zagreb Dox Festival; in Warsaw; in Market of the Cannes Film Festival. At the end of the decade Stefan Valdobrev resumes rehearsals engaging in a trilogy of remarkable young playwright Jana Borisova and director Galin Stoev: "Little piece of nursery", "Pleasantly Scary" and "People of Oz." Three performances of Theatre 199 turn in events for the theatrical life of Bulgaria. In 2012 , it happens one another comeback - after a ten-year absence from the music scene, Stefan Valdobrev decided to reunite the group, which operates in the 90th to resume his concert career and begin work on a new studio album.- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Georges Delerue was born on 12 March 1925 in Roubaix, Nord, France. He was a composer and actor, known for Platoon (1986), Twins (1988) and The Day of the Dolphin (1973). He was married to Micheline Gautron. He died on 20 March 1992 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Music Department
- Writer
- Actor
He did his pre college training at George School, Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, then was in a class of 50 at Williams College majoring in music as an undergraduate distinguishing himself by writing a book, lyrics and music for two college shows based on the adaption of 'Beggar on Horseback'. He won the Hutchinson prize to study music composition for 2 years. His first professional writing was in 1953 when he co authored the script for the television series'Topper'. A year later he wrote all the music and lyrics for'Saturday night' . In 1955 he started work on 'West Side Story' and also found time to writ scripts for 'The Last Word' for Columbia Broadcasting and the background music for' The Party Girls of Summer' For the film of 'West Side Story' he created new and powerful lyrics for the 'America' sequence, which is the only major alteration from the Broadway production.