The world lost one of it’s great musicians and composers with the passing of Lalo Schifrin who created so many of our favorite film scores and soundtracks. Born Boris Claudio “Lalo” Schifrin, Lalo was an Argentine-American pianist, composer, arranger, and conductor who passed away today from complications of pneumonia. He was best known for his large body of film and TV scores since the 1950s, incorporating jazz and Latin American musical elements alongside traditional orchestrations.
Over the years, he composed coveted soundtracks to some of our favorite TV and films that reside in our collection including Kelly’s Heroes, Dirty Harry, Bullitt, Bruce Lee’s Enter The Dragon and TV themes for Mission: Impossible, Starsky & Hutch and Mannix. Schifrin was among the first in his field to apply a broad range of musical ideas to film and TV scores which ranged from from jazz and rock to more modern and complex techniques of orchestral writing. Schifrin was especially prominent and a go to figure during the 1960s and 1970s, when he produced several film and TV scores that have become unforgettable and classic in every way.