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Lalo Schifrin (Spanish pronunciation: born Boris Claudio Schifrin; June 21, 1932 – June 26, 2025) was an Argentine-American pianist, composer, arranger and conductor. He was best known for his large body of film and television Film score, which incorporate jazz and Latin American musical elements alongside traditional orchestration.
Schifrin's best known compositions include the Theme music from (1966) and Mannix (1967), as well as the scores to Cool Hand Luke (1967), Bullitt (1968), THX 1138 (1971), Enter the Dragon (1973), The Four Musketeers (1974), Voyage of the Damned (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), The Amityville Horror (1979) and the Rush Hour trilogy (1998–2007). Schifrin was also noted for collaborations with Clint Eastwood from the late 1960s to the 1980s, particularly the Dirty Harry film series. He composed the Paramount Pictures fanfare used from 1976 to 2004.
Schifrin was a five-time Grammy Award winner; he was nominated for six Academy Awards and four Emmy Awards. In 2019, he received an Honorary Academy Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in recognition of his successful career.
His father, Luis Schifrin, led the second violin section of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic for three decades. His father was Jews and his mother Catholic Church, exposing him early to both kinds of worship. At age six, Schifrin began a six-year course of study on piano with Enrique Barenboim, the father of pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim. Schifrin began studying piano with the Greek-Russian expatriate Andrea Karalin, the onetime head of the Kiev Conservatory and harmony with Juan Carlos Paz. During this time, Schifrin also became interested in jazz.
Although Schifrin studied sociology and law at the University of Buenos Aires, he became more interested in music. At age 20, he successfully applied for a scholarship to the Conservatoire de Paris where he studied from 1952, including with Olivier Messiaen and Charles Koechlin. He also studied African drumming. At night, he played jazz in Paris clubs. In 1955 Schifrin played piano with bandoneon player Astor Piazzolla and represented his country at the International Jazz Festival in Paris.
While in New York City in 1960, Schifrin again met Gillespie, who had by this time disbanded his big band for financial reasons. Gillespie invited Schifrin to fill the vacant piano chair in his quintet. Schifrin immediately accepted and moved to New York City, as Gillespie's pianist and arranger. Schifrin wrote a second extended composition for Gillespie, The New Continent, which was recorded in 1962. On May 26, 1963, he recorded an album, Buenos Aires Blues, with Duke Ellington's alto saxophonist, Johnny Hodges. Schifrin wrote two compositions for the album; Dreary Blues and the title track B. A. Blues.
One of Schifrin's most recognizable and enduring compositions is the theme music for the long-running TV series that started in 1966. It is a distinctive tune written in the uncommon time signature. The meter (dash dash, dot dot) is Morse code for the letters M and I. Similarly Schifrin's theme for the Mannix private eye TV show was composed in 1967 as a jazz waltz; Schifrin composed several other jazzy and bluesy numbers over the years as additional incidental music for the show.
Schifrin's "Tar Sequence" from his Cool Hand Luke score (written in ) was the longtime theme for the Eyewitness News broadcasts on New York station WABC-TV and other ABC affiliates, as well as Nine News in Australia; it was used into the 1990s. CBS Television used part of the theme of his St. Ives soundtrack for its golf broadcasts in the 1970s and early 1980s. Schifrin's score for the 1968 film Coogan's Bluff was the beginning of a long association with Clint Eastwood and director Don Siegel. Schifrin's strong jazz-blues riffs were evident in Dirty Harry. The jazzy Bullitt score for this Peter Yates directed film was recorded in December of the same year. In 1973 he incorporated funk and traditional film score elements into soundtrack for the Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon. He composed the score by sampling sounds from China, Korea, and Japan. The soundtrack has sold over 500,000 copies, earning a gold record.
Schifrin's working score for 1973's The Exorcist was rejected by the film's director, William Friedkin. Schifrin had written six minutes of difficult and heavy music for the initial film trailer, but audiences were reportedly frightened by the combination of sights and sounds. As reported by Schifrin in an interview, Warner Bros. executives told Friedkin to instruct Schifrin to tone it down with softer music, but Friedkin did not relay the message. Schifrin said that working on the film was one of the most unpleasant experiences in his life. He later reused the compositions in other scores. In 1976 he released a single called "Jaws", a version of the John Williams theme from the Universal Pictures film Jaws, on CTI (Creed Taylor Incorporated) records. The single spent nine weeks on the UK chart, peaking at number 14. He also composed the 1976 fanfare for Paramount Pictures, which was used mainly for their home video label and was adapted for the television division 11 years later until it was renamed to CBS Paramount Television (now CBS Studios) in 2006. In 1981 he wrote the music for the slapstick comedy film Caveman.
He founded Aleph Records in 1998. Schifrin made a cameo appearance in the 2002 film Red Dragon. He is widely sampled in hip-hop and trip-hop songs including Heltah Skeltah's "Prowl" and Portishead's "Sour Times". Both songs sample Schifrin's "Danube Incident", one of many themes he composed for specific episodes of the Mission: Impossible TV series. In 2003, Schifrin was commissioned to compose a classical work entitled Symphonic Impressions of Oman by Sultan Qaboos bin Said. In 2004, he wrote the main theme for , a stealth game published by Ubisoft.
On April 23, 2007, Schifrin presented a concert of film music for the Festival du Film Jules Verne Aventures (Festival Jules Verne), at Le Grand Rex theatre in Paris–Europe's biggest movie theater. It was recorded by festival leaders for a CD named Lalo Schifrin: Le Concert à Paris. In 2010, a fictionalized account of Lalo Schifrin's creation of the "Theme from Mission: Impossible" tune was featured in a Lipton TV commercial aired in a number of countries around the world.
After Rod Schejtman won the 2024 Vienna WorldVision Composers Contest, Schifrin in 2024 invited him to jointly compose a symphony dedicated to their country. They composed a 35-minute symphony in three movements, subtitled "Long Live Freedom", for an orchestra of nearly 100 musicians. Intending it as a tribute to Argentina, they drew inspiration from the nation's history over the past 40 years and fused cinematic and classical elements. The symphony premiered at the Teatro Colón on April 5, 2025.
In 2008 Schifrin wrote an autobiography, Mission Impossible: My Life in Music. He said:
Schifrin died from complications of pneumonia at a hospital in Los Angeles, on June 26, 2025, at the age of 93.
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