Gabriel Yared

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Gabriel Yared (Arabic: جبرائيل يارد) (born 7 October 1949) is a Lebanese composer, best known for his work in French and American cinema.

Born in Beirut, Lebanon, his work in France included the scores for Betty Blue and Camille Claudel. He later began working on English language films, winning an Oscar for his score for The English Patient and a nomination for The Talented Mr. Ripley and Cold Mountain.

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[edit] Biography

At the age of 7, his father sent Yared to an accordion teacher. Two years later he stopped his accordion lessons and started music theory and piano lessons. His piano teacher thought that he had no future in music.

Although he was not a natural pianist, he was interested in reading music.

At the age of 14, his piano teacher died, so he was to replace him as the organist of Saint Joseph University. He used the university's library to read all the work of Bach, Schumann, and many others. This extensive reading inspired his first original composition, a piano waltz.

Yared gained a degree in Law. His formal musical education only began when he travelled to France in 1969, and attended the École Normale de Musique de Paris as a non-registered student. There he learned the rules of music composition from Henri Dutilleux.

At the end of 1971, he went to Brazil to visit his uncle. There, the president of the World Federation of light music festivals asked him to write a song to represent the Lebanese in the Rio de Janeiro Song Festival. His song won the first prize.

In Brazil, he kept on performing with his small orchestra. Yared maintains that to this day Brazil has greatly influenced his work.

In 1975, he arranged the album Minacantalucio for Italian legendary singer Mina.

He then went back to France, where he met with the Costa Brothers and collaborated with them. There, he wrote many orchestrations, and ended up with three thousand orchestrations in six years.

Not to be limited by orchestrating, he collaborated with Jacques Dutronc, Françoise Hardy, Charles Aznavour, Mireille Mathieu, etc.. He had collaborations with many musicians, and contributed to many radio and TV jingles, such as TF1 news jingles which he has created since 1980.

[edit] Troy soundtrack

In 2004, Yared's score to the movie Troy(which he had spent nearly a year working on) was rejected (less than a month before the film's opening) due to the poor reception by an audience at a test screening. The test audience were said to have found Yared's music 'old-fashioned'. James Horner was hired to create a replacement score in less than two weeks.

Yared expressed his dismay at the score's rejection in an open letter which was posted on his website. He said that the score the test audience heard was not yet finished or mixed properly, and that the studio had given him no opportunity to alter his score in light of the audience reaction.

Warner Bros. studio still currently owns the rights to Yared's score and an official recording is not currently available and may never be (although selection from the score were briefly posted on Yared's website and bootleg version are available for download on the web). Recently, due to contract holes, a German music label has released a CD with Gabriel Yared's original score.

A film about Gabriel Yared's life Music By... Gabriel Yared by director Rani Khanna has now been released on DVD.

[edit] Selected filmography

[edit] Awards

  • Best Original Score (nominee): Cold Mountain (2003) by The Chicago Film Critics Association
  • Best Score (nominee): Cold Mountain (2003) by Academy
  • Best Score (nominee): Cold Mountain (2003) by Golden Globe
  • Best Original Score (nominee): The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) by Academy
  • Best Score (winner): The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) by Broadcast Film Critics Association
  • Best Film Music (nominee): The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) by British Academy Awards
  • Best Original Score (nominee): The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) by Golden Globe
  • Best Dramatic Score (winner): The English Patient (1996) by Academy
  • Best Score (winner): The English Patient (1996) by Golden Globe
  • Best Music (winner): L'Amant (1992) by French Academy of Cinema


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