Marco Beltrami

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Marco Beltrami (born October 7, 1966) is an Academy-Award nominated Italian-American film composer. Beltrami was born in Long Island, New York, USA. (His father, born in Italy, taught mathematics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook; his mother was Greek-American.) He graduated from Brown University and studied at the Yale School of Music, and then moved west to the USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles, where he studied under Jerry Goldsmith.

A few classical commissions and USC student films aside, Beltrami scored his first movie feature in 1994, the thriller Death Match for director Joe Coppolletta, and reached a higher level of public acclaim in 1996 when he wrote the score for Wes Craven's smash hit shocker Scream. Since then, Beltrami has become firmly entrenched as a composer of choice for the horror/thriller and action genre, with the Scream sequels and hit movies such as Mimic (1997), The Faculty (1998), Angel Eyes (2001), Joy Ride (2001), Resident Evil (2002), which he co-composed with Marilyn Manson), Blade 2 (2002), Hellboy (2004), I, Robot (2004) and Red Eye (2005) featuring in prominently his resume. Apart from horror/thriller and action, he also scores certain independent films such as The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys and Tommy Lee Jones' The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada. He was nominated for an Emmy Award for his score for the film David and Lisa in 1998, indicating a desire to spread his musical wings beyond the bounds of his genre pigeonholing. One of his recent works include Live Free Or Die Hard, the fourth installment in the Die Hard quadrilogy, for which Beltrami used some of Michael Kamen's original themes from the previous three films due to Kamen's 2003 death. Beltrami earned his first Academy Award nomination for his work on James Mangold's acclaimed 2007 western remake, 3:10 to Yuma.

Beltrami's signature style is based around highly percussive texture. He often employs both traditional percussive instruments like bass drums, as well as violins and brass instruments, forming layers of hits and stabs.

[edit] Collaborations

Marco Beltrami has worked repeatedly with such directors as Len Wiseman, Wes Craven, and Guillermo del Toro

It was even reported in October 2002 on Marco's official website that he had worked on orchestral arrangements for the songs "Thyme", "The General", "Leave Me Alone", and "Seven" off the yet unreleased Guns N' Roses album Chinese Democracy. None of the tracks are confirmed for release on the album, but they were confirmed as being recorded during the sessions, and may see release on one of Axl Rose's reported "sequels" if they are not released on Chinese Democracy. As a sidenote, 'Chinese Democracy' is also the name of a track on Beltrami's score for 3:10 to Yuma.