Lalo Schifrin
Boris Claudio “Lalo” Schifrin (born June 21, 1932) is an Argentine pianist, composer, arranger, and conductor. He is best known for his large body of film and TV scores since the 1950s, incorporating jazz and Latin American musical elements alongside traditional orchestrations. He is a five-time Grammy Awardwinner; he has been nominated for six Academy Awards and four Emmy Awards.
Schifrin’s best known compositions include the “Theme from Mission: Impossible“, as well as the scores to Cool Hand Luke (1967), Bullitt (1968), THX 1138 (1971), Enter the Dragon (1973), The Four Musketeers(1974), Voyage of the Damned (1976), The Amityville Horror (1979), and the Rush Hour trilogy (1998–2007). Schifrin is also noted for his collaborations with Clint Eastwood from the late 1960s to the 1980s, particularly the Dirty Harry series of films. He composed the Paramount Pictures fanfare used from 1976 to 2004.
In 2019, he received an honorary Oscar “in recognition of his unique musical style, compositional integrity and influential contributions to the art of film scoring.” Schifrin was born in Buenos Aires to a Jewish family. His father, Luis Schifrin, led the second violin section of the orchestra at the Teatro Colón for three decades.