1965 - BEST MUSIC
List activity
348 views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
9 people
- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
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
- Composer
- Additional Crew
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.- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
The author of the textbook "F.Skinner's Simplified Method for Modern Arranging" (published 1934) began his musical career as a pianist in vaudeville alongside his brother Carl. He then became a noted arranger for New York dance orchestras in the 1930's and was briefly active in the field of music publishing. Skinner's debut in Hollywood was as arranger for MGM's The Great Ziegfeld (1936). After completing work on the picture, he went on to spend the remainder of his lengthy career as composer/orchestrator for Universal (1938-1966) under the aegis of department head Joseph Gershenson. Skinner became best known for his horror film scores, but he was immensely prolific and versatile, handling all manner of subjects (albeit, the vast majority of his films were second features). He often worked in collaboration with the Austrian-born composer Hans J. Salter.
Skinner's best-known film compositions include the dramatic main theme for Universal's "Sherlock Holmes" series, starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce; his classic horror score for Son of Frankenstein (1939); his gentle, romantic themes for Written on the Wind (1956), Imitation of Life (1959) and Back Street (1961); and his effective, haunting arrangement of the American folk song "Oh Shenandoah", which is featured throughout the sprawling Civil War drama Shenandoah (1965). Skinner authored several more textbooks on orchestration theory. His manual "Underscore" (published 1950) was the first of its kind to detail techniques of orchestrating and composing for films.- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
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
- Composer
- Additional Crew
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
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Sol Kaplan was born on 19 April 1919 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Sol was a composer, known for Virtuosity (1995), Coneheads (1993) and Star Trek (1966). Sol was married to Frances Heflin. Sol died on 14 November 1990 in Amagansett, New York, USA.- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Born in San Francisco on July 17, 1928, Vince Guaraldi graduated from Lincoln High School and then San Francisco State College. Guaraldi was already performing while in college in such venues as the Black Hawk and Jackson's Nook, sometimes with the Chubby Jackson/Bill Harris band, other times in combos with Sonny Criss and Bill Harris. He did minor gigs as well, such as weddings. Guaraldi's first recorded work can be heard on "Vibratharpe," a 1953 release by the Cal Tjader Trio. In 1955, he put together his own trio: longtime friend Eddie Duran on guitar and Dean Reilly on bass--and tackled North Beach's bohemian-hungry club, where his piano work became a huge attraction. It soon came to be recognized as the Guaraldi sound. The original Vince Guaraldi Trio, with Eddie Duran and Dean Reilly, can be heard on two genuinely pleasant releases: "The Vince Guaraldi Trio" (1956) and "A Flower is a Lonesome Thing" (1957). Guaraldi toured in 1956 with Woody Herman's third Thundering Herd, replacing Nat Pierce on piano for one season.
Inspired by the 1959 French-Brazilian film Black Orpheus (1959) (Black Orpheus) Guaraldi hit the studio with a new trio: Monty Budwig on bass, Colin Bailey on drums--and recorded his own interpretations of Antonio Carlos Jobim's haunting soundtrack music. The 1962 album was called "Jazz Impression of Black Orpheus," which was released on then-owner Saul Zaentz's Fantasy Records, and "Samba de Orpheus" was the first selection released as a single. Combing the album for a suitable B-side number, Guaraldi's producers finally made a new version of a modest original composition titled "Cast Your Fate to the Wind," which became a smash hit, and won the 1963 Grammy for Best Instrumental Jazz Composition. However, Guaraldi's greatest fame came from scoring A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) in 1965, based on Charles M. Schulz's "Peanuts" comic strip, and he continued to score all the Peanuts television specials till his death.
On February 6, 1976, while waiting in a motel room between sets at Menlo Park's Butterfield's nightclub, Guaraldi died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 47.- 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
- Composer
- Actor
Songwriter ("Witchcraft", "Big Spender", "Hey, Look Me Over"), composer and pianist, educated at the High School of Music and Art and the New York College of Music. He also studied with Rudolph Gruen (on scholarship) and Adele Marcus. He gave his first piano recitals at age six in Steinway Hall and Town Hall in New York. Later, he led his own trio and soloed in night clubs and hotels, and on television, and he made many records. He wrote the Broadway stage scores for "Wildcat", "Little Me", and "Sweet Charity", and wrote songs for "Murray Anderson's Almanac". He has also written music for industrial films and productions. He joined ASCAP in 1953, and his chief musical collaborators included Carolyn Leigh, Joseph Allen McCarthy, Bob Hilliard, Peggy Lee, and Dorothy Fields. His other popular-song compositions include "Paris Is My Old Kentucky Home", "Why Try to Change Me Now", "I'm Gonna Laugh You Right Out of My Life", "The Riviera", "Isn't He Adorable?", "Early Morning Blues", "Playboy Theme", "I Walk a Little Faster", "Firefly", "You Fascinate Me So", "On Second Thought", "Tall Hopes", "El Sombrero", "One Day We Dance", "The Best is Yet to Come", "The Other Side of the Tracks", "I've Got Your Number", "Real Live Girl", "Here's to Us", "It Amazes Me", "That's My Style", "A Doodlin' Song", "When in Rome", "Pass Me By", "Pussycat", "Then Was Then, Now Is Now", "There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This", and "Where Am I Going?". He