Lalo Schifrin: Mission Impossible theme composer dies aged 93
The Grammy Award-winning composer of the Mission: Impossible theme, Lalo Schifrin, has died aged 93, his family announced.The Argentine musician's son, Ryan Schifrin, confirmed his father died of complications from pneumonia on Thursday, in a statement shared with the BBC's US partner CBS.Schifrin was known for his unique percussive and jazzy style during a career that spanned more than six decades, with over 100 film and TV soundtracks to his name.He was nominated for six Oscars and won four Grammys, three of which were for his most celebrated theme for the Mission: Impossible TV series in 1966, which he later updated for the Tom Cruise blockbuster film franchise.
Schifrin's family said he "passed peacefully" surrounded by loved ones and thanked the public for their moving messages of support.The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences paid tribute to the musician's "genius" compositions which "built tension, ignited adrenaline and gave stories their pulse"."We'll forever remember the composer who turned every beat into a thrill, and every silence into suspense," it said in a post on X.The prolific artist - a composer, pianist and conductor - was a consistent nominee at the Oscars with scores for films such as The Sting II, Cool Hand Luke, The Amityville Horror and Dirty Harry. In 2018, Schifrin received an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar presented by Dirty Harry lead Clint Eastwood, who hailed his "unique musical style, his compositional integrity, and his influential contributions to the art of film scoring".When accepting the honour, the Argentine musician said composing for film had given him "a lifetime of joy and creativity" and the award was "a culmination of a dream"."It is a Mission: Accomplished," he said at the time.Born into a musical family in Buenos Aires, Schifrin studied classical piano as a child before moving to Paris in his early 20s to play jazz - later sharing the stage with famous artists such as Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie.After a move to America, he began writing for Hollywood with an eccentric blend of musical genres including jazz, classical, contemporary and pop.His most unforgettable melody for Mission: Impossible was written in an unusual 5/4 time signature and, in his words, was intended to inject "a little humour, lightness" to form a theme "that didn't take itself too seriously".The result became a global earworm to introduce one of the most successful film franchises, with the latest iteration Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning crossing $540m (£393m) worldwide.
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The career of the composer and conductor Lalo Schifrin, who has died aged 93, was incomparably rich and varied, spanning musical genres from jazz and classical to Latin American, funk, rock and avant garde. He conducted (among others) the London Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and composed music ranging from piano concertos and symphonies to an album of songs in the Aztec language for the tenor Plácido Domingo. When the Three Tenors staged their historic inaugural concert on the eve of the football World Cup final in Rome in 1990, it was Schifrin who created the musical arrangements, the first of his four collaborations with them. The recording of the event was declared to be the bestselling classical album of all time. But even if he had done none of this, Schifrin would have become a household name for his work as a composer of film and TV scores. He created a catalogue that places him alongside such renowned names in the field as John Barry, Michel Legrand or Ennio Morricone. His best-known composition was his thrillingly dramatic theme for Mission: Impossible, but he was also responsible for the soundtracks of four of Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry films, and supplied musical backings for films starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman. His music for Peter Yates's Bullitt (1968), set in San Francisco, brilliantly fused a tense rhythm track with stark brass interpolations, jazzy electric guitar and hair-raising strings, crystallising the film's aura of mystery and danger. It was a key moment in cementing the legend of its star, Steve McQueen, as the King of Cool. Schifrin, having already written music for the spy series The Man from UNCLE, originally devised the famous Mission: Impossible theme for its TV incarnation, which premiered on the CBS network on 17 September 1966 (coincidentally, this was within days of the launch of both The Monkees and Star Trek). Its throbbing rhythm instantly oozed danger and menace, and Schifrin built the tension with hectic Latin-flavoured percussion, blaring counterpointed brass and a solo flute. Its unusual 5/4 time signature helped to lodge it in the listener's brain. Appropriately for a show about secret agents, the theme's motif of two long beats followed by two short beats spells the letters 'M' and 'I' in Morse code. M:I's producer Bruce Geller subsequently commissioned Schifrin to write the music for his detective series Mannix. When Mission: Impossible was reborn as a film franchise in the 1990s, with Tom Cruise in the lead role of Ethan Hunt, Schifrin's work was part of the package. A dancefloor version of his theme tune by Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen from U2, coinciding with the 1996 Mission: Impossible film, reached the Top 10 in the UK and the US, and future film releases would feature reworkings of Schifrin's compositions by composers such as Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe. Schifrin was born in Buenos Aires. His father, Luis, was Jewish and his mother, Clara (nee Ester), a Catholic, and the young Lalo attended services in both faiths. Luis was a violinist and concertmaster with the Buenos Aires Philharmonic at the Teatro Colón. Lalo described Clara, who also came from a musical family, as 'a great mother, a great housewife'. He began playing the piano when he was five, and studied with Enrique Barenboim, father of the conductor and concert pianist Daniel Barenboim. Later he was taught by the Ukrainian pianist Andreas Karalis, and tutored in harmony by the Argentinian composer Juan Carlos Paz. 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The latter invited him to come to the US, and by 1958 he had acquired a green card and was living in New York. He composed a suite, Gillespiana, and recorded it with Gillespie's band for the Verve label. According to Schifrin, it sold a million copies. He spent three years as the pianist in Gillespie's ensemble, writing another suite for him, The New Continent (1962). He also became a composer and arranger for Verve, working with artists including Stan Getz and Sarah Vaughan. Verve's parent company was the movie giant MGM, and in 1963 Schifrin, with his wife Donna, moved to Los Angeles to write film scores. He made his Hollywood debut with Rhino! (1964), a drama about endangered white rhinos in Africa. It was the start of an astonishingly prolific career in film and television that would stretch without interruption into the 21st century. 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