The Great Lalo Schifrin dies at 93
I was informed yesterday of this sad news. I have used the Variety piece for the main bulk of this post. Although I was privileged to help out and contribute to a couple of Aleph’s Dirty Harry releases, and had the great honour of Interviewing Mr Schifrin, Lalo always supported us and admired our work here on the Archive. And for that we will always be grateful.
Lalo Schifrin, Prolific Film Composer Who Wrote ‘Mission: Impossible’ Theme, Dies at 93
Lalo Schifrin, the Grammy-winning composer of “Mission: Impossible” and film scores including “Cool Hand Luke,” “Dirty Harry” and “Bullitt,” died Thursday of complications from pneumonia. He was 93.
The Argentine musician was among the first to apply a broad range of musical ideas to film and TV scores, from jazz and rock to more modern and complex techniques of orchestral writing. His heyday was the 1960s and ’70s, when he produced several film and TV scores that are now regarded as classics.
In November 2018, Schifrin became only the third composer in the history of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences to receive an honorary Oscar. Clint Eastwood, for whom Schifrin composed eight scores, made the presentation “in recognition of his unique musical style, compositional integrity and influential contributions to the art of film scoring.”
Actress Kathy Bates said at the event: “His work cannot be easily labeled. Is what he creates jazz? Is it classical, contemporary, popular? The answer is yes, it is all of those things. Lalo is a true Renaissance man: a performer at the piano, a painter with notes, a conductor and composer who has scored some of the most memorable films of the past half-century.”
Also that evening, Schifrin said “composing for movies has been a lifetime of joy and creativity. Receiving this honorary Oscar is the culmination of a dream. It is a mission accomplished,” he said to audience cheers at the Dolby Theatre.
Schifrin was nominated six times for Oscars including score nods for “Cool Hand Luke” (1967), “The Fox” (1968) “Voyage of the Damned” (1976) “The Amityville Horror” (1979) and “The Sting II” (1983), plus a best-song nomination for “The Competition” (1980), but he was especially well-known for his TV themes.
The “Mission: Impossible” theme earned him two of his five Grammy Awards and three of his four Emmy nominations, and brought him lasting fame, not only for the 1960s TV series but for its use throughout the eight Tom Cruise “Mission” films that began in 1996.
Asked about that theme, written for Bruce Geller’s widely praised 1966-73 spy series starring Peter Graves, Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, Schifrin once said “I wanted a little humor, lightness, a theme that wouldn’t take itself too seriously,” although he chose an unusual time signature because “there is something unpredictable about 5/4.”
The first of two “Mission: Impossible” soundtrack albums became a best-seller in 1968, and the theme reached no. 41 on the Billboard pop charts. A track from the second “Mission” album, “Danube Incident,” has often been sampled in hip-hop and trip-hop songs (including “Sour Times” by Portishead and “Prowl” by Heltah Skeltah).
The composer went on to pen a jazz waltz for Geller’s private-eye series “Mannix,” employ a Moog synthesizer for an ambulance-like wail for “Medical Center,” and write such other TV themes as “Starsky & Hutch,” “Most Wanted” and “Petrocelli.” He even made a cameo appearance in the jazz club of “T.H.E. Cat,” another 1960s series he scored that featured plenty of Latin jazz.
Schifrin was born June 21, 1932 in Buenos Aires, son of the concertmaster of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic. He studied piano and, while attending the city’s Colegio Nacional University during the 1940s, paid to smuggle American jazz records into the country; they had been forbidden by Juan Peron’s authoritarian regime.
He studied composition with Juan Carlos Paz and, while at the Paris Conservatory beginning in 1952, with French composer Olivier Messiaen. His daytime classical studies and nighttime performances in Paris jazz clubs helped to solidify his theory that the walls between classical and jazz were artificial and should be torn down.
Returning to Buenos Aires in 1956, he formed his own big band. A chance meeting with jazz great Dizzy Gillespie in Argentina led to Schifrin moving to the U.S. in 1958, becoming Gillespie’s pianist and arranger from 1960 to 1962. Schifrin wrote two large-scale jazz works for him, the Grammy-nominated “Gillespiana” in 1960 and “The New Continent” in 1963. “I’ve had many teachers, but only one master: Dizzy Gillespie,” the composer said.
He signed with Verve Records in 1962 as an artist and arranger, winning his first Grammy for “The Cat,” for organist Jimmy Smith, in 1965 (while also arranging for fellow jazzmen Stan Getz, Cal Tjader, Bob Brookmeyer and others). His second Grammy was for composing “Jazz Suite on the Mass Texts,” a 1965 work for flutist Paul Horn that won praise from jazz critics and religious leaders alike. His Grammy-nominated “Marquis de Sade” LP, which placed jazz soloists in baroque and classical contexts, became a cult favorite.
Schifrin’s reputation as an innovative jazz composer led to an invitation to write for TV and films. Moving to Hollywood in 1963, he wrote music for “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour,” “Kraft Suspense Theatre,” “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” and other series, along with the first made-for-TV movie, “See How They Run” in 1964.
He had written a film score in Argentina (“El Jefe,” 1958) but credited the 1964 thriller “Les Félins” by director René Clément, which he scored in Paris, as his earliest success in film. “If you compare my career to a house, ‘Les Félins’ would be its foundation,” he once said.
Subsequent films “The Cincinnati Kid,” “Cool Hand Luke” and “Bullitt” showcased his ability to incorporate jazz and blues into more traditional orchestral contexts. In 1968, “Coogan’s Bluff” began a series of films with director Don Siegel that included “The Beguiled,” “Dirty Harry” and “Charley Varrick.” He also scored three of the “Dirty Harry” sequels including “Magnum Force,” “Sudden Impact” and “The Dead Pool.”
Schifrin researched Asian music to score Bruce Lee’s 1973 martial-arts classic “Enter the Dragon,” which in turn inspired director Brett Ratner, 25 years later, to hire the composer for his trio of “Rush Hour” action comedies. Among his other ’70s films, he employed futuristic choral passages for George Lucas’ “THX 1138,” Renaissance sounds for “The Four Musketeers,” and provided a fun carnival ambiance for “Rollercoaster.” He scored Sam Peckinpah’s last film, “The Osterman Weekend” (1983) and reached back to his Argentinian roots for Carlos Saura’s “Tango” (1998).
Schifrin wrote the music for more than 40 TV-movies and miniseries including the controversial 1966 “Doomsday Flight,” about a madman who hides a bomb aboard a commercial airliner; and the 1980s and ’90s multi-parters “Princess Daisy,” “A.D.,” “Out on a Limb,” “A Woman Named Jackie” and “Don Quixote.” Other TV series for which he wrote themes included “Blue Light,” “The Young Lawyers,” “Planet of the Apes,” “Bronk” and “Glitter.”
He also scored several documentaries including the “The Hellstrom Chronicle” and such TV docs as “The Making of the President 1964” and “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” the latter of which he turned into a dramatic cantata that was performed at the Hollywood Bowl in 1967.
Schifrin’s concert works included “Cantos Aztecas (Songs of the Aztecs)”; two piano concertos, two guitar concertos, a violin concerto and numerous other symphonic and chamber works. He wrote several medleys for the Three Tenors (Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, José Carreras) in the 1990s and early 2000s. And in 1993, he launched his “Jazz Meets the Symphony” series of recordings for orchestral ensemble and top jazz soloists, which produced seven albums and earned four more of his 19 Grammy nominations.
During the late 1980s and 1990s he also served as music director of the Paris Philharmonic and the Glendale (Calif.) Symphony. In 1998, he started his own record label, Aleph, which produced several acclaimed jazz and orchestral albums including the Latin Grammy-nominated “Latin Jazz Suite” and “Letters From Argentina.” He won a 2010 Latin Grammy for his classical composition “Pampas.”
Schifrin’s last major work was a collaboration with fellow Argentinian composer Rod Schejtman: “Long Live Freedom,” a 35-minute symphony dedicated to their country that debuted April 5 at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.
I'd sent Lalo an email the following morning congratulating him, and like the true gentleman he was, he always replied -
Dear Darren,
It was an incredible honour for me to receive the Oscar, but even more touching to see your words of congratulations.
Happy Holidays,
Lalo
Schifrin authored an autobiography, “Mission Impossible: My Life in Music,” in 2008. As he wrote then: “In music, the choices are infinite. The possibilities of sound combinations with the acoustic instruments of a symphony orchestra, a jazz band or a chamber ensemble have not yet been exhausted. What has been done in the field of electronic music so far has not even scratched the surface of a vast continent to be explored.”
Survivors in addition to his wife Donna include three children (William Schifrin and wife Lissa, Frances Schifrin and husband John Newcombe, Ryan Schifrin and wife Theresa) and four grandchildren.
RIP and God Bless Maestro - our love and deepest thoughts to Donna, Ryan, Theresa and all of the family.
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