Faculty Biography
Daniel Carlin, Chair
"A great strength of the Film Scoring Department is that all of the faculty members either have already finished successful industry careers or are still active in the business. We emphasize the practical side of preparing the student. It's not just a matter of artistry and craft but how students will function out in the real world.
"The primary way you get work in our business is through networking, and that doesn't start when you get out to Los Angeles or New York. It starts here, where you first hook up with people who will be in a position to help you get jobs later.
"We expose students to many different areas on the way to their degree. Video games are providing terrific opportunities for composers and other music workers, so we are building an interactive music lab and hiring a faculty member to teach the unique aspects of this genre.
"In the Film Music Composition Seminar that I teach with Don Wilkins, we spend half the semester talking about general principles and concepts, looking at different composers and styles. The last half, we look at the work students are doing in their other film-scoring classes. The first lesson we teach them is that in this industry, it's not about your music—it's about the director's film. The composer's job is to create music that the director feels best serves the dramatic needs of the film. And when the director is critical, the composer needs to be able to graciously and objectively accept those comments and adapt his or her music accordingly. We're trying to teach our students how to deal with that aspect and to thicken up their skin a bit. For me personally, the rewarding part of this course is to see how good their work already is."
- B.A., San Jose State University
- M.A., University of Connecticut
- Ph.D. Candidate, University of Connecticut
- Former executive director, Henri Mancini Institute
- Former chair and CEO, Segue Music
- Former intelligence analyst, U.S. Air Force
- Emmy Award, Outstanding Achievement in Music Editing, Mini Series or Special (Under Siege)
- Emmy nomination, Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction (The Temptations)
- Collaborated as music supervisor, conductor, music editor, and/or soundtrack producer on over a hundred projects, including An Officer and a Gentleman, Sister Act, Steel Magnolias, Days of Heaven, The Black Stallion, The Bodyguard, Quest for Camelot, Bruce Almighty, What’s Love Got to Do With It, and Last of the Mohicans
- Former Chair, Board of Trustees, National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (GRAMMYs)
- Voting member: Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences; Academy of Television Arts & Sciences
- Codesigner/founder, Sundance Institute Composer Program
- Founding advisory board member, SoundArt
- Former instructor, UCONN, UCLA, Belmont University
Top Five Most Underappreciated Film Scores
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The Getaway
Jerry Fielding
Jerry Fielding was nominated for three Oscars, and would have received additional honors had he not been blacklisted during America’s notorious McCarthy era. Fielding wrote a terrific score for Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway, starring Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw. Only a select few of us ever had the opportunity to appreciate Fielding’s dramatic use of jazz voicing and exciting rhythmic patterns because the score was tossed out at the insistence of McQueen—for political reasons. Quincy Jones, a friend of a friend of McQueen’s was hired to rescore the film. This was neither the first nor the last time a good score was discarded for non-musical reasons. (Footnote: Quincy Jones received a Golden Globe nomination, but he lost to Nino Rota for The Godfather score.)
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A Little Romance
Georges Delerue
Georges Delerue won an Oscar for A Little Romance, and wrote the music for over 350 other projects, including Agnes of God, Julia, Day of the Dolphin, and Anne of a Thousand Days—all Oscar-nominated scores. He was more internationally honored for his collaborations with the great French director Francois Truffaut, including the classic Jules and Jim. A Delerue score that was not nominated was the Herbert Ross film Steel Magnolias, which was Julia Roberts’s break-out role (and first Oscar nomination). The movie also starred Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Olympia Dukakis, Shirley MacLaine, Tom Skerritt, and Sam Shepard. Delerue’s score mirrors and complements the dramatic arc of the story, beginning with ebullient joy, peaking at overwhelming tragedy, and concluding on a note of eternal optimism. The music that enters in the moments following the main character's death, and resolves at the funeral, is as heartbreakingly beautiful as you will ever hear.
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Heart Beat
Jack Nitzsche
Jack Nitzsche was one of the very first film composers to come from the rock world, having written and arranged for and/or recorded with Phil Spector, the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, Leon Russell, Tina Turner, and, most famously, Neil Young. Jack therefore seemed an improbable choice for director John Byrum to score Heart Beat, the story based on Carolyn Cassady’s autobiography Off the Road (as a sort of response to Jack Kerouac’s beat memoir On the Road, in which she played a major role). The movie offers fine performances by stars Nick Nolte, John Heard, and Sissy Spacek. In preparing the score, Nitzsche wrote a killer romantic theme and then had the good sense to hire the great Shorty Rogers to arrange all of the jazz charts. (Nitzsche turned the main theme into a song, "I Love Her Too," with his wife and collaborator, Buffy Saint-Marie, with whom he later won an Academy Award for the song “Up Where We Belong” from An Officer and a Gentleman.) The Heart Beat score is bebop at its truest, performed by some of the major musicians from that era, including Pete Jolly, Red Callender, Shelly Manne, Pete Condoli, Bob Cooper, and Art Pepper, who played the alto solos. I loved this score and hope to get my hands on it again sometime.
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The Mission
Ennio Morricone
In my opinion, the number one most underrated film score of all time was written for a 1986 movie starring Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, and the relative newcomer Liam Neeson. An important studio executive (who wouldn't want to be quoted in print) commented to me that Ennio Morricone, composer of the music for Steel Magnolias, had a better grip on the story than did the director. This score is arguably one of the best of all time. Morricone manages to combine traditional music from the Latin mass with native poly-rhythms, indigenous voices, and soulful symphonic melodies. And he does so after introducing them individually so that they evolve throughout the length of the movie in a most skillful and artistic manner. (Footnote: Although nominated for an Oscar, Morricone’s effort lost to Herbie Hancock’s score for Round Midnight, which many insiders felt had been nominated in the wrong category. As a result, the Academy’s Music Branch subsequently changed its eligibility rules for film scores.)
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One Eyed Jacks
Hugo Freidhofer
Marlon Brando directed only one film in his career: One Eyed Jacks, starring Karl Malden, Katy Jurado, and Brando himself. The music was written by Hugo Freidhofer, an Oscar winner (Best Years of Our Lives) and eight-time Oscar nominee. Regrettably, Friedhofer was not recognized for this classic western score, in which he adeptly interwove ethnic elements with gritty melodrama and one of the most memorable love themes ever written for a movie.
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