Author of legendary music for "Mission: Impossible" dies
Kyiv • UNN
Lalo Schifrin, Grammy winner for Mission: Impossible, dies at 93 from pneumonia complications. He composed music for movies such as Cool Hand Luke and Dirty Harry, and received an honorary Oscar and six nominations for this award.
Composer Lalo Schifrin, Grammy winner for the film "Mission: Impossible", died on Thursday from complications caused by pneumonia. He was 93 years old. This was reported by UNN with reference to Variety.
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The Argentine musician, composer of music for films such as "Cool Hand Luke", "Dirty Harry" and "Bullitt", was one of the first to apply a wide range of musical ideas to musical compositions for films and television, from jazz and rock to more modern and complex orchestral writing techniques. His heyday came in the 1960s and 1970s, when he wrote several film and television show soundtracks that are now considered classics.
In November 2018, Schifrin became only the third composer in the history of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive an honorary Oscar. Clint Eastwood, for whom Schifrin wrote eight scores, then gave a presentation "in recognition of his unique musical style, compositional integrity and influential contribution to the art of film scoring."
Schifrin was nominated for an Academy Award six times, including nominations for music for "Cool Hand Luke" (1967), "The Fox" (1968), "Voyage of the Damned" (1976), "The Amityville Horror" (1973), "The Sting II" (1983) and "The Competition" (1980), but he gained the most popularity for his television themes.
The "Mission: Impossible" theme earned him two of his five Grammy Awards and three of his four Emmy nominations, and also brought him enduring fame, not only for the 1960s series, but also for its use in eight "Mission" films starring Tom Cruise, which began filming in 1996.
When asked about the theme, written for Bruce Geller's widely known 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 be taken too seriously," although he chose an unusual time signature because "there's something unpredictable about 5/4."
The first of two "Mission: Impossible" soundtrack albums became a bestseller in 1968, and the theme reached #41 on the Billboard pop charts. The track from the second "Mission" album, "Danube Incident", was frequently sampled in hip-hop and trip-hop songs (including Portishead's "Sour Times" and Heltah Skeltah's "Prowl").