Jerry Goldsmith | Artist

Jerrald King Goldsmith was an American composer and conductor born 1929 in Pasadena, California. He is regarded as one of the greatest Hollywood composers for his work in film and television scoring, with hundreds of blockbuster movie scores to his credit. Goldsmith started playing piano as a child and by age thirteen studied privately with concert pianist Jakob Gimpel. At age sixteen Goldsmith saw the 1945 film Spellbound and was inspired by Miklos Rozsa's unconventional score to pursue a career in music. He later attended the University of Southern California where he attended courses by Rózsa. In 1950, Goldsmith found work at CBS as a clerk typist in the network's music department and began writing scores for radio shows. His talent soon recognised, he progressed to scoring live CBS television shows including several episodes of the sci-fi series The Twilight Zone, which anticipated his career-long interest in Science fiction movie scores. His feature film debut came with the music for the low budget western Black Patch in 1957. After more TV work he came to the attention of established composer Alfred Newman who recommended him to score big budget western Lonely Are the Brave (1962) staring Kirk Douglas. This led to his next commission for the biopic Freud (1962) which brought his first Academy Award nomination, though he lost to fellow first-time nominee Maurice Jarre for his magnificent music to the film Lawrence of Arabia. Goldsmith would go on to have a long and illustrious career, collaborating with some of the best known directors including Robert Wise, Howard Hawks, Otto Preminger, Joe Dante, Richard Donner, Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, Paul Verhoeven and Franklin J. Schaffner. A small selection of his best original soundtrack albums includes A Patch of Blue, The Blue Max, Patton, Papillon, Chinatown, QBVII, The Wind and the Lion, Logan's Run, The Omen, Alien, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Basic Instinct and The Mummy. Over the course of his career Goldsmith received 18 Academy Award nominations, making him one of the most nominated composers in the history of the Awards. Despite this, he won only one Oscar, his 1976 score for The Omen. In 1991, Goldsmith received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music, and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Artist Website: wikipedia/Jerry_Goldsmith

Featured Albums: Jerry Goldsmith

Related Artists: Joel Goldsmith

Video Clips: Greatest Hits, Star Trek, Alien