Lalo Schifrin (1932-2025)

[Piet De Ridder]

Lalo Schifrin has passed away, aged 93. A true musical giant, great composer, brilliant orchestrator, orchestra leader, excellent jazz pianist, ... the recipient of many awards among which an Academy Honorary Award, an honour which he shared with only a tiny handful of other composers.

From Variety: "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."

My favourites among Schifrin's movie work are "The Hellström Chronicle" (selected by film critic Richard J. Smith as "the worst score of the 70's") and "Bullitt".

About the former Jerry McCulley wrote: "One of the most unusual scores ever composed for a motion picture was created by award-winning Lalo Schifrin. "The Hellstrom Chronicle" provided the Argentine-born composer a unique musical challenge during an era when his jazz-suffused early 1970s film and TV scores were in vogue. By contrast, Schifrin relies heavily on his considerable classical training and modern instincts here, specifically a then-equally-in-vogue evocation of 20th-century classical modernism. But while polytonal music can often seem a challenging listening chore in the wrong hands, Schifrin's ever insightful mastery of color and orchestral dynamics impart its frequent use here an internal logic it so often misses."



And here's Johnny Hodges backed by a Schifrin-led quartet:





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[RobS]

Fantastic musician

[Guy Rowland]

On his most famous work:

There are very few TV or film themes that become so part of the lexicon that they don't just define a movie or show, they define something in life. John Williams made the music of sharks; Vangelis covered running in slow motion. Lalo Schifrin did attempting-something-impossible.

To create something that universal that kids can sing in the playground, and have them do it in 5/4 - well now.

[Lawrence]

I loved his music.

The local high school conductor in Binghamton was his brother Bernard Schifrin, a fine writer in his own right and reputed to be a very good teacher. Sadly, I went to the high school across town, but my professor there was very influential in my career and had retired from arranging for the NBC Studio orchestra in New York.

R.I.P., Lalo

[Geoff Grace]

Lalo Schifrin’s Mission Impossible and Mannix theme songs were staples of my youth. A lot of his great work has already been mentioned above, so I’ll just include the Mannix theme song for those who missed it:



RIP, Lalo Schifrin.

Best,

Geoff