Profoundly influenced by, above all, Duke Ellington, North began to write several innovative compositions in jazz. His "Revue for Clarinet and Orchestra" was originally commissioned by Benny Goodman and first performed in 1946 under the direction of Goodman and Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. North went on to compose theatrical scores, including "Death of a Salesman" for Elia Kazan and this opened the door to Hollywood.

Alexander Courage has been doing as he describes for nearly four decades in a career that spans radio, film and television. He came out to California after World War II where he began composing and conducting for CBS Radio. In 1948 he joined MGM and worked for the next twelve years as an arranger and orchestrator with Adolph Deutsch and Andre Previn. 

David Amram remains one of America’s most profoundly expressive composers. Like Leonard Bernstein, who appointed him as the first composer in residence for the New York Philharmonic, Amram refused to be pigeon holed or labeled by a single genre or musical style. He has written opera, classical, folk, jazz, Native American, and motion picture music. Of the latter, it can safely be stated that the least is known. Amram’s first film score was for ECHO OF AN ERA...

David Shire is an American pianist, songwriter and the composer of stage musicals and film and television scores. Some of his best known works include the soundtrack to the 1974 movie The Taking of Pelham One Two Three and parts of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack such as "Night on Disco Mountain", an adaptation of Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain. His other work includes the score of the 1985 film, Return to Oz, the "sequel-in-part" of The Wizard of Oz.

Elmer Bernstein was born in New York City on April 4, 1922. Musically gifted, he first pursued a career as a concert pianist, coming to film music via experience in the army with radio scoring. He is most identified - at least on this side of the Atlantic - with things and sensibilities American, yet this talent has manifested itself in a wide variety of genres and, chiefly during the Fifties and Sixties, with consistently innovatory flair (even some years before the renowned ...

Ernest Gold, who has composed the Oscar-winning pseudo-Hebraic melody for Otto Preminger's film Exodus (1960), which was one of the most irritatingly hummable themes ever heard on the soundtrack of a Hollywood epic. This had as much to do with Gold's musical gifts as the fact that the theme was repeated, with subtle variations, throughout the entire 220-minute movie. Gold's film scores often contained this repetition.

Fred Karlin, who scored more than 130 motion pictures and movies for television, also wrote books on movie music, performed and recorded, and made his own documentary. The eclectic musician was at ease with jazz, blues, folk, rock, classical, medieval and other historic musical genres. Karlin co-wrote (with Rayburn Wright) an authoritative textbook on film scoring, “On the Track,” in 1990 and four years later wrote “Listening to Movies: The Film Lover’s Guide to Film Music.”

Jerome Moross forever changed the sound of Western movies with his classic, Oscar-nominated score for The Big Country in 1958. But he was also an innovator in the musical theater, in  ballet and in other musical realms. His Broadway show The Golden Apple was a landmark achievement combining opera with musical comedy; and he consistently surprised critics and audiences alike with his fresh approaches in the worlds of chamber and symphonic music as well.     

Kenyon Hopkins is probably best remembered today for his work as music director for the television series The Odd Couple and The Brady Bunch, but his work in music long predated and easily transcended any hit television series. Hopkins' career bridged two musical periods, from the end of the big-band era to post-war filmmaking, and he was good enough to work with some of the best in both fields. But it was as a creator of instrumental mood music ...

Composer Laurence Rosenthal was born in Detroit, Michigan. He studied piano and composition at the Eastman School of Music and later with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. His symphonic compositions have been premiered by Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philarmonic, among others. He has composed extensively for films and television. He has been nominated for two Oscars. 

Leonard Rosenman, the Oscar-winning film composer who helped introduce avant-garde music to Hollywood movie scores, who could also write lushly traditional film scores, composed the original music for dozens of well-known pictures. With the composers Bernard Herrmann and Alex North, Rosenman was widely credited with bringing film music  long awash in Tchaikovsky-inflected Romanticism  squarely into the 20th century.