On June 26th local time, Hollywood film score master Lalo Schifrin died of pneumonia in a Los Angeles hospital, just five days after his 93rd birthday.
Lalo Schiffrin
Lalo Schifrin's most popular work is the theme melody of the Mission: Impossible series starring Tom Cruise. However, tracing back to the source, it was actually the music that Schifrin composed for the TV version of Mission: Impossible. In addition, he has been nominated for an Oscar six times, but unfortunately he failed every time. However, in 2018, the Oscars "compensated" him with a lifetime achievement statuette.
Lalo Schifrin was born on June 21, 1932 in a Jewish immigrant family in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. His father, Luis, was a violinist in the Buenos Aires Philharmonic Orchestra for thirty years. Influenced by his family, young Schifrin fell in love with music at an early age, and under the guidance of famous teachers, he showed amazing talent in piano.
As a teenager, he studied sociology at the University of Buenos Aires and developed a great interest in jazz. Later, he described the feeling of hearing the records of jazz masters such as Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie brought by his classmates for the first time as "like a religious conversion... It showed me the way to Damascus."
At the age of 22, he received a scholarship to study at the Paris Conservatory, taking classes during the day and playing in various jazz clubs at night, accumulating rich experience. That year, the International Jazz Festival was held in Paris, and the tango composer and accordion master Astor Piazzolla represented Argentina in the festival, and his fellow countryman Lalo Schifrin was responsible for the piano accompaniment.
At the age of 24, he returned to Buenos Aires after completing his studies and soon formed a 16-member jazz band, which provided accompaniment for radio and television programs, and occasionally recorded soundtracks for local film and television works. A few years later, by chance, he met his idol, the American black jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and was invited to join his band, perform and record albums together as a pianist, and settled in New York, USA.
In 1963, he moved to Los Angeles and began his film music career. In the following decades, his music included classic works such as "The Daredevil" starring Steve McQueen, "Blunt Cool" starring Paul Newman, "The Slayer" directed by Richard Lester, the horror film "The Amityville Horror", the "Dirty Harry" film series starring Clint Eastwood, and "Rush Hour" starring Jackie Chan. On the film information website IMDb, he has composed music for 226 films.
Schifrin composed the score for the Dirty Harry series starring Clint Eastwood.
Back on September 17, 1966, the TV series Mission: Impossible premiered on CBS, and the theme song he composed was unforgettable to the audience. Schifrin created a tense atmosphere through tense Latin percussion, harsh brass music and flute solos, and the two long notes and two short notes in the theme song just spelled out the letters M and I in Morse code, which fits the title and theme of Mission: Impossible, and is definitely a stroke of genius.
Schifrin composed the theme music for the TV series Mission: Impossible, which was later used in the film.
In 1973, Bruce Lee made a special trip to visit Shiffrin and invited him to compose the soundtrack for his new film "Enter the Dragon". The Kung Fu Emperor told Shiffrin that he would play the theme music of "Mission Impossible" when he practiced.
Bruce Lee's "Enter the Dragon" was also composed by Shiffrin.
In the 1990s, Shiffrin devoted more energy to jazz performance and arrangement, and released a series of albums under the name "Jazz Meets the Symphony". These albums include orchestral arrangements of works by jazz masters such as Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Sylvester Monk and his mentor Gillespie, while also trying to jazzify classical works such as Mozart, Bach or Puccini.
Lalo Schifrin's career is rich and varied, spanning jazz, classical, Latin American, funk, rock and avant-garde music. He has conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. In addition to film scores, he has also composed a large number of piano concertos and symphonies. In 1990, the "Three Tenors" held a historic joint performance on the eve of the men's football World Cup final in Rome, and Schifrin was also responsible for the performance arrangement.
In 2018, Shiffrin (right) received the Oscar for Lifetime Achievement from Eastwood.
In April 2025, Lalo Schifrin's last major work premiered at the Teatro Colón. Titled "Viva Libertad," it was a 35-minute symphony co-written with Argentinian composer Rod Scheterman as a tribute to their homeland.
