Topic: BOOKS
Scarecrow Press will release the autobiography of six-time Academy Award® nominated composer Lalo Schifrin this summer. Mission Impossible: My Life in Music, edited by Richard Palmer, is a journey from Schifrin's formative years in Argentina to the classical and jazz atmospheres in Paris in the 1950s; from his jazz career with Dizzy Gillespie to his development as a film composer. Organized in eight parts, the book reflects on Schifrin's cosmopolitan experience providing impressions and vignettes of the extraordinary people with whom he worked. His music bridges three styles-jazz, classical, and film/TV-his autobiography offers insights on all three genres, as well as politics, literature, and travel. It includes over 30 photos, appendixes listing Schifrin's works, a discography, and an audio CD featuring some of Schifrin's greatest compositions. As a young man in his native Argentina, Lalo Schifrin received classical training in music and studied law. He came from a musical family, and his father was the concertmaster of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Buenos Aires at the Teatro Colon. After his studies at the Paris Conservatory, Schifrin returned to Argentina and formed his own big concert band. Dizzy Gillespie heard Schifrin perform and asked him to become his pianist, arranger, and composer. In 1958, Schifrin moved to the United States and began his remarkable career. Since then Schifrin's career has taken him in many directions. As a jazz musician he performed and recorded with Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, Count Basie, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and George Benson. His classical activities include Zubin Mehta, The Three Tenors, Rostropovich, Barenboim, and others. His longtime involvement in both the jazz and symphonic worlds came together in 1993 as pianist and conductor for his on-going series of "Jazz Meets the Symphony" recordings, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and jazz stars like Ray Brown, Grady Tate, Jon Faddis, Paquito D'Rivera and James Morrison. Schifrin has written over 100 film and television scores including Mission Impossible, Mannix, Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, The Cincinnati Kid, Amityville Horror, four of the Dirty Harry films, and more recently Abominable and the Rush Hour trilogy. To date, Lalo Schifrin has won four Grammys® (twenty-one nominations) , one Cable ACE Award, and six Academy Award® nominations....Available Here

Topic: MUSICALS
Alan Jay Lerner, American songwriter, lyricist. (August 31, 1918 – June 14, 1986)
Together with Frederick Loewe, he created some of the world's most popular and enduring works of musical theatre. Lerner wrote the lyrics for some of the theatre's most famous songs. He won three Tony Awards and three Academy Awards, among other honors. Born in New York City, he was the son of Joseph Jay Lerner, the brother of the owner of the Lerner Stores, Samuel Alexander Lerner. Alan Jay Lerner was educated at Bedales School, Choate Rosemary Hall, and Harvard, where he befriended classmate John F. Kennedy. Following graduation, Lerner wrote scripts for radio, including Your Hit Parade, until he was introduced to a down-on-his-heels Austrian composer Frederick Loewe, who needed a lyricist, in 1942. They scored My Fair Lady, Camelot, Brigadoon, Gigi, others.

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Topic: Ray Heindorf
Oscar winning composer Ray Heindorf (August 25, 1908 - February 2, 1980)...was born in Haverstraw, New York, he grew up on the town of Mechanicville and played piano in local movie houses, and was educated at the Troy Conservatory of Music. From the late 20’s to the early 70’s, he was a composer-arranger-conductor- musical director for numerous movies, having worked on more than 150 of them throughout his career. He was nominated for 18 Oscars, and won three for scoring: Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942),This Is the Army (1943) and The Music Man (1962). Other movies he worked on included The Cabin in the Cotton (1932), Captain Blood (1935), Blues in the Night (1941), Kings Row (1942), Young Man with a Horn (1950), A Street Car Named Desire (1951), The Jazz Singer (1952), A Star Is Born(1954), Finian’s Rainbow (1968) and 1776 (1972). While much of the music he composed was for film background scores, he wrote “Pete Kelly’s Blues”, “I’m in a Jam”, and “Melancholy Rhapsody”, among others. He died in 1980.

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Topic: Carmen Dragon
CARMEN DRAGON conductor, arranger –received an Oscar for best score (w/Morris Stoloff) for “Cover Girl” (1944) – musical director for films “Lovely To Look At” and “The Kid From Brooklyn” -rec. w/Hollywood Bowl Symphony for Capitol. Conducted radio orchestra for many Hollywood based network shows in the 1940's. Carmen Dragon was born on July 28, 1914 and died March 28, 1984. Dragon was born in Antioch, California. He was very active in pops music conducting and composed scores for several films, including At Gunpoint (1955), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Night into Tomorrow (1951), and Kiss Tomorrow Good-bye (1950). He conducted the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, and they performed on the "Standard Oil Hour," broadcast on NBC for elementary schools in the late 1940s through the 1950s. The show was sponsored by Standard Oil Company of California, but other than the name there were no commercials. The program featured a high quality introduction to classical music for young people growing up in the 1940s and early 1950s. Dragon made a series of popular light classical albums for Capitol Records during the 1950s with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. Some of these recordings have been reissued by EMI on CD. Carmen Dragon is the father of harpist Carmen Dragon and Daryl Dragon of the 1970s pop music duo The Captain & Tennille.

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Topic: Ginger Rogers
16 JULY 1911 - Birthday Ginger Rogers (Virginia Katherine McMath), Academy Award winning American actress, singer and dancer who partnered with Fred Astaire...("Did everything he did but backwards and in high-heels" ;-)

Died 25 April 1995. Rogers introduced some celebrated numbers from the Great American Songbook, songs such as Harry Warren and Al Dubin's "The Gold Diggers' Song (We're in the Money)" from Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), "Music Makes Me" from Flying Down to Rio (1933), "The Continental" from The Gay Divorcee (1934), Irving Berlin's "Let Yourself Go" from Follow the Fleet (1936) and the Gershwins' "Embraceable You" from Girl Crazy and "They All Laughed (at Christopher Columbus)" from Shall We Dance (1937). Furthermore, in song duets with Astaire, she co-introduced Berlin's "I'm Putting all My Eggs in One Basket" from Follow the Fleet (1936), Jerome Kern's "Pick Yourself Up" and "A Fine Romance" from Swing Time (1936) and the Gershwins' "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" from Shall We Dance (1937). Ginger Rogers won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her starring role in 1940s Kitty Foyle...dramatized on radio's Lux, Presents Hollywood:

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Topic: Ronald Binge
15 JULY 1910 Birth of British arranger and orchestra leader Ronald Binge. Was chief arranger for Mantovani (1935-1954), where he developed Mantovani's "cascading strings" sound. Binge was also a film composer who wrote for UK films "Desperate Moment", "Our Gal Friday" and composed many light music works. Died 1979.
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Topic: James Newton Howard

Available here

WARNER BROS. RECORDS TO RELEASE THE DARK KNIGHT ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK ON JULY 15, 2008. Soundtrack to Highly Anticipated Summer Release Scored by Acclaimed Film Composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. The Dark Knight Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - the haunting score to the hotly anticipated feature film The Dark Knight - will be released by Warner Bros. Records on July 15, 2008, three days before the movie opens nationwide on July 18th. Composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, who collaborated on the score for the 2005 blockbuster Batman Begins, were asked by director Christopher Nolan to work together again, scoring its follow-up, The Dark Knight. The duo recorded the orchestral soundtrack for the film in London this April. Zimmer and Howard are among the film industry's most respected and sought-after composers. Each has a career encompassing well over 100 film and television scores. Zimmer won an Academy Award for his score for The Lion King, and has earned six additional Oscar nominations for his work on Gladiator, The Thin Red Line, Rain Man, As Good as It Gets, The Preacher's Wife and The Prince of Egypt. He includes among his more recent film credits Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, The Simpsons Movie, and the Spanish-language Casi Divas.

Topic: Cezary Skubiszewski
Soundtrack Features Original Music By Top Australian Composer Cezary Skubiszewski

AVAILABLE HERE

Lakeshore Records will release the original soundtrack for DEATH DEFYING ACTS via iTunes and in stores on July 8. Called "one of the best Aussie directors of her generation" by Variety, Gillian Armstrong (Charlotte Gray, Oscar and Lucinda) helms this film about Harry Houdini's romance with a con woman. In his attempts to contact his dead mother, the magician (Guy Pearce) meets a beautiful psychic (Catherine Zeta-Jones) who isn't all she appears. Cezary Skubiszewski (Lilian's Story, Two Hands) composed the music for the film. Australia's newspaper The Age called Polish émigré Cezary Skubiszewski Australia's leading film composer. He has received numerous awards for composing in his adopted country, including two each from the Australian Film Institute and Australian Performing Rights Association. He has worked with many of Australia's top directors Gregor Jordan (Two Hands with Heath Ledger), Craig Lahiff (Black & White), Steve Jacobs (La Spagnola), Richard Flanagan (The Sound of One Hand Clapping), Sam Neill (The Brush Off), Dein Perry (Bootmen) writer/producer Andrew Knight (the acclaimed mini-series).

Topic: Mark Kilian
LAKESHORE RECORDS TO RELEASE SOUNDTRACK FOR THE FILM BEFORE THE RAINS, COMPOSED BY MARK KILIAN "Unforgettable... a hothouse of sensuality, empire, class and guilt" - Mira Nair Soundtrack Lakeshore Records will release the soundtrack for BEFORE THE RAINS will be available in stores on July 22. The soundtrack contains original music composed by Mark Kilian. The film was an official selection of the Toronto International Film Festival and Tribeca Film Festival. The South African-born Kilian came to the United States to attend the University of Southern California's graduate program in Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television. After leaving USC he began working for film composer Christopher Young where he worked as the composer's assistant and electronic score producer for many films including SPECIES, COPYCAT, VIRTUOSITY, and HARD RAIN. He scored his first film LOVERGIRL in 1997 and would continue on to write for many feature films and TV series including KING SOLOMON'S MINES, THE ANIMATRIX, and JAKE IN PROGRESS. In 2004 Kilian would return to South Africa to score the Oscar®-winning film TSOTSI. He then scored director Gavin Hood's next film RENDITION, traveling to Morocco and South Africa for research and to record. The ability to blend world music, particularly South African, with modern classical and electronica has helped Kilian to carve out a niche in the film music industry. For BEFORE THE RAINS, Kilian traveled to India where he worked with many of the top musicians in the country including the legendary Indian percussionist, Sivamani. Set in 1930s southern India against the backdrop of a growing nationalist movement, BEFORE THE RAINS is the English language debut of acclaimed Indian director Santosh Sivan (THE TERRORIST, ASOKA). An idealistic young Indian man (Rahul Bose) finds himself torn between his ambitions for the future and his loyalty to the past when people in his village learn of an affair between his British boss (Linus Roache) and a village woman (Nandita Das). Santosh Sivan (ASOKA) directs this film that is presented by Merchant Ivory, the renowned force behind HOWARD'S END and THE REMAINS OF THE DAY.

ON THE WEB | Mark Kilian, composer

Topic: Thomas Newman
Walt Disney Records will release the original soundtrack for Walt Disney Pictures/Pixar Animation Studios WALL.E on June 24, 2008. The recording features score written by 8 time Academy Award®-nominated composer Thomas Newman [photo] (Finding Nemo, American Beauty) and the original song "Down to Earth" written and performed by Peter Gabriel (with music by Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman). The soundtrack also includes two songs from Hello Dolly performed by Michael Crawford ("It Only Takes A Moment" and "Put On Your Sunday Clothes") and Louis Armstrong's "La Vie En Rose."

AVAILABLE HERE

Academy Award®-winning writer-director Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, A Bug's Life) didn't wait long to ask Finding Nemo collaborator Thomas Newman to compose the music for WALL.E. Stanton described, "The night of the Oscars in 2004 for Nemo, we went out for a celebratory toast at the bar in the middle of the ceremony, and right there I remember saying, 'Okay, I've got this idea, and it involves Hello Dolly and science fiction.' Wondering if he would still talk to me after that." The Hello Dolly reference didn't scare off Newman - his uncle Lionel was the conductor for the 1969 film. Thomas Newman is member of the film-scoring Newman dynasty (his father and uncle are the legendary composer and conductor Alfred and Lionel Newman respectively, his brother is composer David Newman and cousin is composer/singer/songwriter/recording artist Randy Newman). After studying at Yale University, Thomas Newman joined the family business and began scoring for film in 1984. It was ten years later that he would became a double Academy Award®-nominee with Little Women and The Shawshank Redemption. He has since received 8 nominations for the films American Beauty, Road To Perdition, Finding Nemo, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, and The Good German. He also composed the theme music for the television shows Boston Public and Six Feet Under and the miniseries Angels in America. Though he has written music for a wide range of films Thomas Newman has never composed for a science fiction film. He brought his own unique style to WALL.E. Stanton describes, "He's got a very unique style that often involves a lot of overdubs and mixing after he's recorded the orchestra. And it just allows this fresh palette of sounds to come in." "He's really nailed an identity for not only the movie but for the characters and for the moments," Stanton continues, "and I can't imagine it any other way." Legendary artist Peter Gabriel had first contacted Andrew Stanton through a mutual friend, Gabriel's bass player Tony Levin. Gabriel emailed Stanton seeking advice on a different animated feature. The email exchanged ended with Gabriel adding a post script offering "If you ever need a song in one of your movies, just let me know." Stanton called in the marker, and Gabriel to collaborate with Newman on the song "Down To You," which Peter performs. In addition, Gabriel co-composed two additional score cues with Newman. What if mankind had to leave Earth, and somebody forgot to turn the last robot off? After hundreds of lonely years of doing what he was built for, WALL.E (short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) discovers a new purpose in life (besides collecting knick-knacks) when he meets a sleek search robot named EVE. EVE comes to realize that WALL.E has inadvertently stumbled upon the key to the planet's future, and races back to space to report her findings to the humans (who have been eagerly awaiting word that it is safe to return home). Meanwhile, WALL.E chases EVE across the galaxy and sets into motion one of the most exciting and imaginative comedy adventures ever brought to the big screen.

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