Alan Silvestri

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Alan Silvestri

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Biography

Composer Alan Silvestri got his start working on low-budget features and television. By the mid-'80s, he had begun working on such big-budget features as Romancing the Stone (1984) and all three entries in the Back to the Future trilogy. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
Filmography:

Alan Silvestri

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Van Helsing

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Identity

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Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life

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Showtime

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Stuart Little 2

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Lilo & Stitch

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Maid in Manhattan

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The Mexican

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The Mummy Returns

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Serendipity

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Reindeer Games

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What Lies Beneath

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What Women Want

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Cast Away

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Siegfried & Roy: The Magic Box

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Stuart Little

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The Odd Couple II

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The Parent Trap

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Practical Magic

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Holy Man

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Fools Rush In

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Volcano

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Contact

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Mouse Hunt

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Sgt. Bilko

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Eraser

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The Long Kiss Goodnight

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The Quick and the Dead

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The Perez Family

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Judge Dredd

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Father of the Bride II

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Grumpier Old Men

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Blown Away

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Clean Slate

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Forrest Gump

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I Love Trouble

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Richie Rich

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Cop and a Half

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Sidekicks

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Super Mario Bros.

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Grumpy Old Men

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Judgment Night

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The Bodyguard

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Death Becomes Her

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FernGully: The Last Rainforest

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Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot

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Dutch

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Father of the Bride

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Ricochet

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Shattered

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Soapdish

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Back to the Future Part III

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Predator 2

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Young Guns II

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The Abyss

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Back to the Future Part II

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Downtown

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She's Out of Control

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MAC and Me

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My Stepmother Is an Alien

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Who Framed Roger Rabbit

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Outrageous Fortune

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Overboard

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Predator

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American Anthem

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The Clan of the Cave Bear

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Critical Condition

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The Delta Force

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Flight of the Navigator

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No Mercy

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Back to the Future

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Cat's Eye

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Fandango

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Summer Rental

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Romancing the Stone

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The Fifth Floor

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The Amazing Dobermans

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The Doberman Gang

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Composer

Called "one of the most prolific and gifted of the current generation of film composers" by American Film magazine, Alan Silvestri has composed scores for Hollywood blockbusters including Romancing the Stone (which marked Silvestri’s first big break as a composer for film), the Back to the Future series, the Bodyguard, Forrest Gump, and Cast Away. During his 30-year career, Silvestri has composed more than 30 film scores and provided music for the television series Starsky and Hutch, CHiPs, and Airwolf.

Silvestri was born on March 26, 1950, in New York City and grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey. He graduated from Teaneck High School in 1968, counting among his friends at the school Roger Birnbaum, who was to become a producer of such top-grossing films as The Sixth Sense. The two were friends from an early age, and continued to be close after they both succeeded in Hollywood. "Roger Birnbaum and I first met on the Little League field in Teaneck when we were 11," Silvestri told the Record of Bergen County, New Jersey. Of his high school career Silvestri told the Record, "I was neither a lady-killer nor a good student." He excelled in music, however, which was to become a lifelong passion. Playing in his high school band, he learned to play drums, saxophone, clarinet, and guitar. Silvestri cites his band director at the time, G. Donald Mairs, as a major influence on his development as a musician, telling the Record, "He had been a professional musician all his life and became a mentor to me. He played with Les Brown and had been out in the world. We became good friends and that was a godsend."

After high school Silvestri went on to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, which he attended for two years before moving to Las Vegas, where he played guitar and toured with Wayne Cochran & the C.C. Riders. Promised a job arranging music in Los Angeles, Silvestri moved west and found himself unemployed in the film capital of the world when the job fell through. Broke, he managed to talk his way into the first job of what was to become a long and prolific career; becoming the film scorer for a low-budget movie called The Doberman Gang in 1972. A series of such jobs followed for the next six years. He then moved up to prime-time television when he landed the job of composer for the popular drama about California motorcycle cops, CHiPs. The job lasted five years, and at the end of it, he returned to film in the late 1970s and early 1980s, composing scores for the films Las Vegas Lady, The Amazing Dobermans, and the 1984 film Par où t’es rentré? On t’a pas vu sortir (How did you get in? We didn’t see you leave).

Silvestri reached a new level in his career when he got a call from director Bob Zemeckis, who needed music for a single scene in his big-budget Hollywood movie Romancing the Stone. It was Silvestri’s lucky break, and he scored the entire film, which was released in 1984. From then on he composed the music for one Hollywood blockbuster after another, including Back to the Future (1985) and its two sequels, Predator (1987), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), and The Abyss (1989). He continued to land high-profile film projects in the 1990s, composing for such films as Predator 2, Soapdish, Father of the Bride, Super Mario Brothers, Grumpy Old Men, and Forrest Gump, for which he received an Academy Award nomination in 1995. His more recent credits include Cast Away and What Lies Beneath (2000).

Although he received no formal training in film scoring, Silvestri was deeply influenced by the films he saw as a child, and this, in turn, has influenced his work. "I grew up watching those things," he told American Film. Silvestri also acknowledges that his music has a particular style, and that there is "a strong rhythmic component in what I do…. A composer develops a vocabulary just as a filmmaker does." He’s aware that his vision is not the only one that counts, however: "The important thing," he continued in American Film, "is finding the relationship between the composer and the director that will be the most beneficial in bringing about the director’s vision of his film, not the composer’s vision…. My impression of what I do is very much like conversing with film. I’ll see a picture. I’ll begin to work through scenes, and I have a response that is very conversational."

Silvestri’s working process begins, in fact, by talking to the director. Together they decide what kind of sound the film is to have, and, as the film nears completion, they hammer out the details of what scenes are to include music and where it will start and stop. It doesn’t

end there, however. After the hard work of composing, Silvestri told American Film, "you find yourself in a studio with 98 musicians. You are spending about $50,000 a day and you are getting maybe two minutes of music an hour. At the end of the day, maybe you’ve recorded 12 to 15 minutes of music." With the stakes so high, Silvestri believes it of the utmost importance to have done his homework, and to create the music the director wants to hear. Even so, directors have been known to throw out entire film scores and start over, often with a new composer.

Along with purely artistic considerations that come into play when scoring film music, Silvestri must work within the technical requirements of filmmaking—for instance, writing music loud enough to come through a scene involving a freight train, or soft enough to avoid stepping on quiet dialogue. "How to marry sound to image is a question the composer has to continually ask himself as he is writing," he told American Film. Ultimately, Silvestri always strives to stretch his creative muscles, to try things he hasn’t done before. As he told American Film, "I’ve always been associated with slambang action movies that use big orchestral scores, but… I’m excited about the fact that there are folks out there looking for me to do something I haven’t done before."

Selected discography

Soundtracks
Back to the Future, MCA, 1985.
American Anthem, Atlantic, 1986.
The Abyss, Atlantic, 1989.
Back to the Future II, MCA, 1989.
Back to the Future III, Varese Sarabande, 1990.
Predator 2, Varese Sarabande, 1990.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Disney, 1990.
Father of the Bride, Varese Sarabande, 1991.
Ferngully… The Last Rainforest, MCA, 1992.
Blown Away, Sony, 1994.
Forrest Gump, Sony, 1994.
Father of the Bride II, Hollywood, 1995.
Quick and the Dead, Varese, 1995.
Richie Rich, Varese, 1995.
Voyages: The Film Music Journeys of Alan Silvestri (compilation), Varese, 1995.
Eraser, Atlantic, 1996.
Contact, Warner Bros., 1997.
Stuart Little, Polygram, 1999.
What Lies Beneath, Varese Sarabande, 2000.
What Women Want, Sony, 2000.
Cast Away, Varese, 2001.

Sources
Books
Encyclopedia of Popular Music, 3rd edition, Macmillan, 1998.

Periodicals
American Film, August 1991.
Record (Bergen County, NJ), October 27, 1999.

Online
"Alan Silvestri," All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com (February 4, 2002).
"Awards for Alan Silvestri," Internet Movie Database, http://us.imdb.com (February 4, 2002).
  • Genres: Soundtrack

Biography

Of composer Alan Silvestri's many film scores, he is perhaps best-known for his work with director Robert Zemeckis, starting with their first movie project, Romancing the Stone, and continuing through the next decades with many more blockbuster classics. Silvestri began playing music at a young age while growing up in Teaneck, NJ, and was already considering a music career by the age of 15. He attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, but after only two years moved out to Las Vegas and started touring with Wayne Cochran & the C.C. Riders. Silvestri became interested in arranging and ended up stranded in Los Angeles after a job opportunity for arranging fell through. He got his first break at around the age of 20, when he met Golden Globe and Oscar nominee lyricist Bradford Craig; through Craig, he got a job scoring the small film (with no previous scoring experience) The Doberman Gang (1972). After this, Silvestri worked on other low-budget movies until getting a steady job in 1977 scoring the television series ChiPs. After the show was canceled, Silvestri's career hit a dry period that ended when he teamed up with Zemeckis on a film that proved to be a big break for all involved: Romancing the Stone (1984). Silvestri and Zemeckis have teamed up on many successful films since, including Back to the Future (1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), the number one box office hit Forrest Gump (1994), and What Lies Beneath (2000). Silvestri has scored many films outside of his work with Zemeckis, as well, including Flight of the Navigator (1986), Predator (1987), The Abyss (1989), The Bodyguard (1992), The Quick and the Dead (1995), Stuart Little (1999), and many more. Some of Silvestri's music was released on CD, including the soundtracks for Richie Rich (1994), Father of the Bride, Part II (1995), The Quick and the Dead, and the compilation Voyages: The Film Music Journeys of Alan Silvestri. ~ Joslyn Layne, Rovi
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Alan Silvestri

Silvestri in 2009
Background information
Birth name Alan Anthony Silvestri
Born (1950-03-26) March 26, 1950 (age 62)
New York City
Genres Film score
Occupations Composer, conductor
Instruments Guitar, Piano, Synthesizer, Synclavier, Drums
Years active 1972–present

Alan Anthony Silvestri (born March 26, 1950) is an American film composer and conductor.

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Career

Silvestri is best known for his collaborations with director Robert Zemeckis, having scored Romancing the Stone (1984), the Back to the Future trilogy (1985, 1989, 1990), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Death Becomes Her (1992), Forrest Gump (1994), Contact (1997), Cast Away (2000), The Polar Express (2004), Beowulf (2007), A Christmas Carol (2009) and The Avengers (2012).

Silvestri is also known for his work on Predator (1987) and Predator 2 (1990), both of which are considered preeminent examples of action/science fiction film scores. He has also begun a collaboration with director Stephen Sommers, scoring the films The Mummy Returns in 2001, Van Helsing in 2004, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra in 2009. His most recent work included The Avengers in 2012.

Silvestri has also composed music for television shows, including TJ Hooker (one episode), Starsky & Hutch (three episodes), CHiPs, and Manimal (all but one episode).

Silvestri was 21 years old when he started his film/television composing career. His early style is marked by a strong use of the octatonic scale, as well as an eclectic use of different notes and instruments.

Personal life

Silvestri was born in New York City. He studied guitar at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, but dropped out after two years to tour with Wayne Cochran and the C.C. Riders.

Silvestri grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey[1] and attended Teaneck High School there.[2]

Silvestri also owns a vineyard, Silvestri Vineyards, located in Carmel Valley, California.[3]

Awards

Silvestri has received two Academy Award nominations, one for Best Original Score for Forrest Gump (1994) and one for Best Original Song for "Believe" on The Polar Express soundtrack. He also received two Golden Globe nominations: Best Score for Forrest Gump and Best Song for The Polar Express.

He has also received four Grammy Award nominations, winning two awards – Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media, for “Believe” from The Polar Express in 2004 and Best Instrumental Composition, for "Cast Away End Credits" from Cast Away in 2002. His other two nominations were for Best Soundtrack Album (for Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit). During the 2005 Grammys, Josh Groban performed "Believe." [4]

On September 23, 2011 he was awarded with the Max Steiner Film Music Achievement Award by the City of Vienna at the yearly film music gala concert Hollywood in Vienna.

Discography

1970s

  • The Doberman Gang (1972)
  • The Mack (1973) (1983 video reissue)
  • Las Vegas Lady (1975)
  • The Amazing Dobermans (1976)
  • The Fifth Floor (1978)
  • CHiPs (1978–1983)

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

References

  1. ^ ASCAP Henry Mancini Award, ASCAP. Accessed October 21, 2007. "Manhattan-born and Teaneck, New Jersey-bred, Silvestri attended Boston's prestigious Berklee College of Music before joining a Las Vegas band as a guitarist."
  2. ^ Coutros, Evonne. "THE DRUMMER WHOM `GUMP' MARCHES TO", The Record (Bergen County), March 26, 1995. Accessed October 21, 2007. "Nearly three decades after Alan Silvestri drummed out beats for the Teaneck High School band, he's hoping to march to the podium Monday night to collect an Oscar."
  3. ^ Home. Silvestrivineyards.com. Retrieved on 2012-05-02.
  4. ^ TribLIVE: #(gSection.name)#. Pittsburghlive.com (2012-01-05). Retrieved on 2012-05-02.
  5. ^ Patches, Matt (May 7, 2012). "'Avengers' Composer Alan Silvestri: Bringing Heroes Together with Music — EXCLUSIVE". Hollywood. http://www.hollywood.com/content/news_detail.aspx?id=26609172&p=2&dir=next. Retrieved May 8, 2012. 

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Mentioned in

Father of the Bride, Pt. 2 [Original Soundtrack] (1995 Album by Alan Silvestri)
The Towering Inferno and Other Disaster Classics (1998 Album by Various Artists)
What Lies Beneath (2000 Album by Alan Silvestri)
Ricochet (1991 Album by Original Soundtrack)
Forrest Gump [Original Score] (1994 Album by Alan Silvestri)