Film music contributor

Marco Beltrami (born October 7, 1966) is an Academy-Award nominated Italian-American film composer. Beltrami was born in Long Island, New York, USA. (His father, born in Italy, taught mathematics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook; his mother was Greek-American.) He graduated from Brown University and studied at the Yale School of Music, and then moved west to the USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles, where he studied under Jerry Goldsmith. A few classical commissions...

John Towner Williams (born February 8 1932) is an American composer, conductor and pianist. In a career that spans six decades, Williams has composed many of the most famous film scores in history, including those for Jaws, ''Star Wars'', Superman, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, Hook, Schindler's List, and the Harry Potter film series. In addition, he has composed theme music for four Olympic Games, NBC Nightly News, numerous television series and concert...

Dominic Muldowney (born 1952 in Southampton) is a British composer. He studied at the universities of Southampton (with Jonathan Harvey) and York (with Bernard Rands and David Blake), and took private lessons with Harrison Birtwistle. From 1974 to 1976 he was composer-in-residence to the Southern Arts Association. From 1976 he worked with the Royal National Theatre in London, and succeeded Birtwistle as its music director, a post he held from 1981 to 1997. Muldowney is perhaps best known for...

David Grusin (born June 26, 1934) is an Academy Award-winning American composer, arranger and pianist. Grusin has composed many scores for feature film and television, and he has won numerous awards for his soundtrack work. Although he has worked in many musical styles, Grusin is often thought of as a jazz artist. Born in Littleton, Colorado, Grusin has a filmography of about 100 titles. His many awards include an Oscar for best original score for The Milagro Beanfield War, as well as Oscar...

Ilayaraaja ( இளையராஜா in Tamil) (born June 2, 1943) is an Indian film composer. He has composed over 5000 songs and provided background music for more than 840 Indian films in various languages in a career spanning more than 30 years. He has won the Indian National Film Awards for best music composition thrice. He had completed a course in classical guitar (higher local) with the Trinity College of Music in London. Ilaiyaraja was born in a rural family in Pannaipuram near Madurai, Tamil Nadu,...

Arthur Lange (April 16, 1889 - December 7, 1956) was a United States bandleader and Tin Pan Alley composer of popular music. He composed music for over 120 films, including Grand Canary and Woman on the Run. Lange shared an Oscar nomination with Hugo Friedhofer for the film The Woman in the Window. All in all he was nominated four times for Oscars but did not win any. During the first half of the 1920s Lange recorded copiously for Cameo Records. His 1923 orchestra, which also played the...

Gabriel Yared (Arabic: جبرائيل يارد) (born 7 October 1949) is a Lebanese composer, best known for his work in French and American cinema. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, his work in France included the scores for Betty Blue and Camille Claudel. He later began working on English language films, winning an Oscar for his score for The English Patient and a nomination for The Talented Mr. Ripley and Cold Mountain. At the age of 7, his father sent Yared to an accordion teacher. Two years later he stopped...

Maurice Jarre (born in Lyon, France, 13 September 1924) is a French composer and conductor. Although he has composed several concert works, he is best known for his film score for motion pictures, particularly those of David Lean: Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and A Passage to India (1984). All three of these scores won Academy Awards. Other notable scores of his include The Message (1976), Dead Poets Society (1989) and Ghost (1990). He has had a star in Hollywood since 2001...

Yuvan Shankar Raja (Tamil: யுவன் சங்கர் ராஜா)is one of top film music composers from Tamil Nadu. He is one of the most successful composers in South India. The first film he composed for was the Tamil film Aravindhan. Hailing from a musical family, much of Yuvan’s inspiration is said to come from the several genres he grew up listening to such as Western classical music and jazz, in addition to urban Hip Hop and other styles and sounds. His father Ilaiyaraaja is also an inspiration. Yuvan...

Al Hoffman (September 25 1902–July 21 1960), a member of the Songwriter's Hall Of Fame since 1984, was a hit songwriter active in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, usually co-writing with others and responsible for many number one hits through each decade, many of which are still sung and recorded today. The popularity of Hoffman's song, "Mairzy Doats", co-written with Jerry Livingston and Milton Drake, was such that newspapers and magazines wrote about the craze. Time magazine titled one article "Our...

David Lee Shire (born July 3, 1937) is an American songwriter and the composer of stage musicals and film and television scores. Shire was born in Buffalo, New York, the son of Esther Miriam (née Sheinberg) and Buffalo society band leader and piano teacher Irving Daniel Shire. He met his long-time theater collaborator lyricist/director Richard Maltby, Jr. at Yale University, where they wrote two musicals, Cyrano and Grand Tour, which were produced by the Yale Dramat. Shire also co-fronted a...