Elliot Goldenthal

Elliot Goldenthal
Elliott Goldenthal in 2006
Born	(1954-05-02) May 2, 1954 Brooklyn, New York
Occupation	Composer
Years active	1984-present
Partner(s)	Julie Taymor

Elliot Goldenthal (born May 2, 1954) is an American composer of contemporary classical music. He was a student of Aaron Copland and John Corigliano, and is best known for his distinctive style and ability to blend various musical styles and techniques in original and inventive ways. He is also a film-music composer, and won the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 2002 for his score to the motion picture Frida, directed by his long-time partner Julie Taymor.

Life and career

Goldenthal was born on May 2, 1954, as the youngest son of a Jewish housepainter father and a Catholic seamstress mother in Brooklyn, New York City, where he was influenced from an early age by music from all cultures and genres. Both pairs of Goldenthal's grandparents emigrated to the United States from Bucharest and Iași, Romania. Goldenthal lived in a multi-cultural part of town, and this is reflected in his works. He attended John Dewey High School in Brooklyn where, at the age of 14, he had his very first ballet Variations on Early Glimpses performed; he continued to display his eclectic musical range, performing with rock bands in the seventies. He then studied music full-time at the prestigious Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with composer John Corigliano (whom he greatly admired), to earn his Bachelor of Music degree (1977) and Master of Music (1979) in musical composition.

He lives in New York City "happily unmarried", as he once put it, with his partner Julie Taymor, whom he met in 1980 through a mutual acquaintance, who told him, "I know a person whose work is just as grotesque as yours"; they have an office/apartment where they both live and work.

Goldenthal has written works for concert hall, theater, dance and film. His work includes music for films such as Alien 3, Michael Collins, Batman Forever, Heat and the Academy Award-winning score for Julie Taymor's Frida, a movie in which Goldenthal had a small acting part as a "Newsreel Reporter". Incidentally he also had a small part in the stage show Juan Darièn as a "Circus Barker / Streetsinger".

The Tony-Award winning carnival mass Juan Darièn (1988/'96) and The Green Bird (1999), based on a story by Carlo Gozzi, are a few of the composer's theatre works.

In 2006, Goldenthal completed his original three-act opera with Taymor entitled Grendel an adaptation of the John Gardner novel which told the story of Beowulf from the monster's point of view. It had its world premiere in early June 2006 at the Los Angeles Opera, the role of Grendel performed by Eric Owens, with an audience that indluded John Williams and Emmy Rossum; the opus was added to the Los Angeles Opera's permanent repertoire and earned Goldenthal a nomination in April 2007 for the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

In 2008 Goldenthal reunited with Michael Mann to score 1930s gangster movie Public Enemies and in 2009 he scored another Julie Taymor Shakespeare adaptation, The Tempest.

He cites Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu as an influence and someone he styles his own career on; Goldenthal has said that the lines between traditional concert music and orchestral film score have become more blurred which is the way he thinks it should be. He has also collaborated four times with Irish director Neil Jordan, scoring movies like Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles and In Dreams.

Style

Elliot Goldenthal has been called the "thinking man's composer" by film-music collectors and a generally more cerebral choice for film makers and lovers of film music. He is known for his experimentation, nuances and willingness to try unconventional techniques (For two good examples of this, see Alien 3 (soundtrack) and Titus (soundtrack)). He has scored films in almost every genre from horror to action to Shakespeare adaptations; he has not yet scored comedy, but he has composed comedic motifs for several films such as Demolition Man and the Batman sequels, which are considered satirical films in any case. His eclectic output has gained him a great deal of respect in the music and film communities and with fans. He is not as well known, as John Williams, Danny Elfman, or Hans Zimmer but he is widely appreciated for his musical abilities and distinctive style, which though artistically appreciated by film music enthusiasts, have been said by some to be too experimental or inaccessible to the mainstream listener because of his defiance of the norms of contemporary classical music.

His action music is atonal and brutal and sometimes, in underscore, he uses very fast French horn passages with bending tones/whining; Goldenthal has said that he doesn't "hear" atonal and tonal, rather, "I either hear melody or I hear sonority".

“ Every project we do requires a different approach, but one thing that's always consistent is the framework that Rick provides. In essence, he's giving me all these new instruments to work with. He keeps coming up with surprising combinations of sounds. ” — Goldenthal (March 2003), on Richard Martinez

Goldenthal often works with a team he assembled after the soundtrack for Drugstore Cowboy: Teese Gohl as supervising producer, Robert Elhai as orchestrator, Joel Iwataki and Steve McLaughlin as sound engineers and Richard Martinez as electronic music producer. According to Martinez, "a lot of composers want to focus on writing their music, and that's what [his] team allows Elliot to do."

At the website filmscoremonthly.com, a former classmate of Goldenthal's commented on an article on the Sphere score from 1998 which stated that when he and Elliot were both studying at the Manhattan School of Music in the '70s, Elliot was already experimenting with unusual techniques. Once, when studying trumpet, Elliot had asked him to "buzz into the wrong end of the mouthpiece and sing into it as well". He thought he was crazy but, looking back after a decade or so of Goldenthal's film and concert music, he "was just way ahead of the rest of us," he said.

Lists of works

See also the categories Compositions by Elliot Goldenthal and Elliot Goldenthal albums

Film and television works

Year	Title	Director(s)	Studio(s)	Notes
1979	Cocaine Cowboys	Ulli Lommel	International Harmony	N/A
1980	Blank Generation	Ulli Lommel	International Harmony	N/A
1989	Drugstore Cowboy	Gus Van Sant	Avenue Pictures	Soundtrack released by Novus with 21 minutes of score.
	Pet Sematary	Mary Lambert	Paramount Pictures	Performed by the Orchestra of St. Luke's. Soundtrack released by Varèse Sarabande Expanded soundtrack released by La-La Land Records
1990	Criminal Justice	Andy Wolk	Home Box Office	Television film.
1991	Grand Isle	Mary Lambert	Turner Pictures	N/A
1992	Fool's Fire	Julie Taymor	Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)	Television film.
	Alien 3	David Fincher	Brandywine Productions 20th Century Fox	Soundtrack released by MCA
1993	Demolition Man	Marco Brambilla	Silver Pictures Warner Bros.	Soundtrack released by Varèse Sarabande.
	Golden Gate	John Madden	The Samuel Goldwyn Company	Soundtrack released by Varèse Sarabande.
1994	Roswell	Jeremy Kagan	Citadel Entertainment	Television film.
	Interview with the Vampire	Neil Jordan	Geffen Pictures Warner Bros.	Soundtrack released by Geffen Records. Nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.
	Cobb	Ron Shelton	Regency Enterprises Alcor Films Warner Bros.	Soundtrack released by Sony Classical.
1995	Batman Forever	Joel Schumacher	PolyGram Filmed Entertainment Warner Bros.	Soundtrack released by Atlantic. Nominated for a Grammy Award.
	Heat	Michael Mann	Regency Enterprises Warner Bros.	Soundtrack released by Warner Bros. Records with about 30 minutes of score.
1996	Michael Collins	Neil Jordan	Geffen Pictures Warner Bros.	Soundtrack released by Atlantic. Nominated for an Academy Award.
	A Time to Kill	Joel Schumacher	Regency Enterprises Warner Bros.	Soundtrack released by Atlantic.
1997	The Butcher Boy	Neil Jordan	Geffen Pictures Warner Bros.	Soundtrack
	Batman & Robin	Joel Schumacher	PolyGram Filmed Entertainment Warner Bros.	Score never commercially released.
1998	Sphere	Barry Levinson	Baltimore Pictures Warner Bros.	Soundtrack released by Varèse Sarabande.
1999	In Dreams	Neil Jordan	Amblin Entertainment DreamWorks Pictures	Performed by the London Metropolitan Orchestra. Soundtrack released by Varèse Sarabande.
	Titus	Julie Taymor	Overseas Film Group Clear Blue Sky Productions Fox Searchlight Pictures	Performed by the London Metropolitan Orchestra. Soundtrack released by Sony Classical.
2001	Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within	Hironobu Sakaguchi	Square Pictures Columbia Pictures	Performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. Soundtrack released by Sony Classical.
2002	Frida	Julie Taymor	Ventanarosa Miramax Films	Soundtrack released by Universal. Won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.
	The Good Thief	Neil Jordan	Alliance Atlantis Fox Searchlight Pictures	Performed by the London Metropolitan Orchestra and the Irish Film Orchestra. Soundtrack released by Island Records.
2003	S.W.A.T.	Clark Johnson	Original Film Columbia Pictures	Soundtrack released by Varèse Sarabande.
2007	Across the Universe	Julie Taymor	Revolution Studios Columbia Pictures	Score never commercially released.
2009	Public Enemies	Michael Mann	Relativity Media Universal Pictures	Soundtrack released by Decca with 13 minutes of original score.
2010	The Tempest	Julie Taymor	Touchstone Pictures Miramax Films	Soundtrack released by Zarathustra Music
2015	A Midsummer Night's Dream	Julie Taymor	Londinium Films	Upcoming.

Concert music works

• 1974 - Three Pieces for Piano
• 1977 - Requiem Mass
• 1979 - Sonata for Double Bass and Piano
• 1980 - Brass Quintet No. 1, Brass Quintet No. 2 (No. 2 has been recorded recently by Extension Ensemble, New York)
• 1980 - Jabberwocky for Woodwind Quartet (set to the poem by Lewis Caroll)
• 1988 - Pastime Variations
• 1990 - Shadow Play Scherzo
• 1996 - Fire Water Paper: A Vietnam Oratorio (recorded in 1995, featuring Yo Yo Ma)
• 1999 - Los Heraldos Negros
• 2013 - String Quartet No. 1 "The Stone Cutters"
• 2013 - Adagietto Doloroso
• 2014 - Symphony in G# Minor (premiered on May 8, 2014 at Pacific Symphony Orchestra)
• 2014 - Grand Gothic Suite (inspired by Goldenthal's Batman scores, premiered at Fimucite 2014 in Tenerife July 12, 2014)

Theatre works

• 1984 - Play, "The King Stag" (production of Carlo Gozzi's play by Andrei Serban)
• 1985 - Musical, "Liberty's Taken" (an original musical co-created with David Suehsdorf and Julie Taymor)
• 1986 - Musical, "The Transposed Heads" (adapted by Sidney Goldfarb and Julie Taymor from the novel by Thomas Mann)
• 1988 - Play (Commedia), "The Serpent Woman" (production of Carlo Gozzi's Commedia)
• 1988 - Musical, "Juan Darien: A Carnival Mass" (off-Broadway, reworked and recorded for Broadway in 1996; Co-bookwriter, lyricist, arranger of the Latin text.)
• 1997 - Ballet, "Othello" (a ballet with choreography by Lar Lubovitch)
• 1999 - Musical "The Green Bird" (on Broadway production of Carlo Gozzi's work)
  Stage director: Julie Taymor
• 2006 - Opera, "Grendel" (opened June at Los Angeles Opera; not released on CD yet as of October 2012)
  Libretto: Julie Taymor and J D. McClatchy, after the novel Grendel by John Gardner, and the poem Beowulf
  Stage director: Julie Taymor
• 2013 -Play, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (directed by Julie Taymor, written for the Theatre for a new audience production of the Shakespeare play which opened the new Polansky Theater in Brooklyn)

Awards and nominations

• (2007) Pulitzer Prize for Music in Music Nomination for his acclaimed "Grendel" opera
• (2004) Emmy Awards Nomination, "Great Performances: Dance in America" - Outstanding Music Composition for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special (Dramatic Underscore)
• (2004) ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards Win, "S.W.A.T." - Top Box Office Film Score
• (2003) World Soundtrack Awards 2003 Win, "Frida" - Best Original Soundtrack of the Year
• (2003) World Soundtrack Awards 2003 Win, "Frida" - Soundtrack Composer of the Year
• (2003) World Soundtrack Awards 2003 Nomination', "Burn It Blue" from "Frida" - Best Original Song Written for a Film
• (2002) Academy Awards Win, "Frida" - Best Original Score
• (2002) Academy Awards Nomination, "Frida", "Burn It Blue" - Best Original Song
• (2002) Golden Globes Win, "Frida" - Best Original Score
• (2002) World Soundtrack Awards 2002 Nomination, "The Dream Within" from "Final Fantasy: The Sprits Within" - Best Original Song Written for a Film
• (1999) CFCA awards Nomination, "The Butcher Boy" - Best Original Score
• (1998) ASCAP awards Win, "Batman & Robin" - Top Box Office Film Score
• (1998) Chicago Film Critics Awards Nomination, "The Butcher Boy" - Best Original Score
• (1998) Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards 1998 Win, "The Butcher Boy" - Best Original Score
• (1997) Tony Awards Nomination, "Juan Darien: A Carnival Mass" (Broadway Production) - Best Original Musical Score
• (1997) ASCAP awards Win, "A Time to Kill" - Top Box Office Film Score
• (1997) Grammy Nomination, "Defile and Lament" from "A Time to Kill"
• (1996) Academy Awards Nomination, "Michael Collins" - Best Original Score
• (1996) Golden Globe Nomination, "Michael Collins" - Best Original Score
• (1996) ASCAP awards Win, "Batman Forever" - Top Box Office Film Score
• (1995) Grammy Nomination, "Batman Forever" - Best Instrumental Composition
• (1995) ASCAP awards Win, "Interview with the Vampire" - Top Box Office Film Score
• (1995) Golden Globe Nomination, "Interview with the Vampire" - Best Original Score
• (1994) Academy Awards Nomination, "Interview with the Vampire" - Best Original Score
• (1994) ASCAP awards Win, "Demolition Man" - Top Box Office Film Score
• (1990) Edinburgh Festival Critics Choice Award Win, "Juan Darien: A Carnival Mass" - Best Music
• (1990) American Academy of Arts and Letters Richard Rodgers Award Win, "Juan Darien: A Carnival Mass" - Best Music
• (1988) Obie Award Win, "Juan Darien: A Carnival Mass" (Original Production) - Best Music

Among others including the Arturo Toscanini Award, the New Music for Young Ensembles composition prize, the Stephen Sondheim Award in Music Theater and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship.

See also

• Avant-garde
• Modernism (music)

External links

• Elliot Goldenthal at the Internet Movie Database
• Elliot Goldenthal at the Internet Broadway Dabatase
• Elliot Goldenthal at Rate Your Music
• Elliot Goldenthal discography at Discogs
• Elliot Goldenthal at Allmusic
• "A Website for the Composer"
• Elliot Goldenthal at Theoscarsite.com
• Elliot Goldenthal at Variety.com
• Elliot Goldenthal at Moviemusicuk.us
• An Interview with both Taymor and Goldenthal by the New York Times
• An indepth interview from 2003