| David Shire | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | David Lee Shire |
| Born | July 3, 1937 Buffalo, New York |
| Genres | Film score musicals Television score |
| Occupations | Composer |
| Instruments | Piano |
| Years active | 1960s–present |
David Lee Shire (born July 3, 1937) is an American songwriter and the composer of stage musicals, film and television scores. The soundtrack to the movie The Taking of Pelham 123 and parts of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack such as Night on Disco Mountain, an adaptation of Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, are some of his best known works. His other work includes the score of the 1985 film, Return to Oz, the "sequel-in-part" of The Wizard of Oz (1939 film). Shire is married to actress Didi Conn.
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Shire was born in Buffalo, New York, the son of Esther Miriam (née Sheinberg) and Buffalo society band leader and piano teacher Irving Daniel Shire.[1] He met his long-time theater collaborator lyricist/director Richard Maltby, Jr. at Yale University, where they wrote two musicals, Cyrano and Grand Tour, which were produced by the Yale Dramatic Association. Shire also co-fronted a jazz group at school, the Shire-Fogg Quintet, and was a Phi Beta Kappa honors student, with a double major in English and music. He was a member of the Pundits and Elihu and he graduated magna cum laude in 1959.
After a semester of graduate work at Brandeis University (where he was the first Eddie Fisher Fellow) and six months in the National Guard infantry, Shire took up residence in New York City, working as a dance class pianist, theater rehearsal and pit pianist, and society band musician while constantly working with Maltby on musicals. Their first off-Broadway show, The Sap of Life, was produced in 1961 at One Sheridan Square Theater in Greenwich Village.
Shire began scoring for television in the 1960s and made the leap to scoring feature films in the early 1970s. He was married to actress Talia Shire, for whose brother Francis Ford Coppola he scored The Conversation, perhaps his best known score, in 1974. Additional screen credits include Two People, All the President's Men, The Hindenburg, Farewell My Lovely, The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three, 2010, Return to Oz, Max Dugan Returns (a Neil Simon write) and Zodiac. He composed original music for Saturday Night Fever (for which he received two Grammy Award nominations), and also worked on several disco adaptations including "Night on Disco Mountain." He won the Academy Award for Best Song for his and Norman Gimble's theme song for Norma Rae, "It Goes Like It Goes". He was also nominated the same year in the same category for "The Promise (I'll Never Say Goodbye)" from the motion picture The Promise, with lyrics by Marilyn and Alan Bergman. In 1981 his song "With You I'm Born Again," recorded by Billy Preston and Syreeta, was a top five international hit and stayed on the pop charts for 26 weeks.
The Conversation featured an austere score for piano. On some cues Shire took the taped sounds of the piano and distorted them in different ways to create alternative sonic textures to round out the score. The music is intended to capture the isolation and paranoia of protagonist Harry Caul (Gene Hackman). The score was released on CD by Intrada Records.
For The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Shire used serial techniques and a funky jazz-rock rhythm section for the main theme. It is intended to evoke the bustle and diversity of New York City, and is an unofficial theme for the 6 subway line (the local Lexington Avenue Line that is depicted in the film). The soundtrack album was the first ever CD release by Film Score Monthly. The end titles contain a more expansive arrangement of the theme. Shire received two Grammy nominations for his work on the film.
Shire's television scores have earned five Emmy nominations.[2] His hundreds of scores for television include: Sarah, Plain and Tall; Raid on Entebbe; The Kennedys of Massachusetts; Serving in Silence; Christopher Reeve's Rear Window; Oprah Winfrey's The Women of Brewster Place; and The Heidi Chronicles. He also composed themes for the television series Alice and McCloud.
His film and television scoring style is often compared to mostly his late counterpart Jerry Fielding.
As a pit pianist, Shire played for the original productions of both The Fantasticks and Funny Girl, eventually serving as Barbra Streisand’s accompanist for several years. He also intermittently conducted and arranged for her (most notably for her television specials Color Me Barbra and The Belle of Fourteenth Street), and over a period of several years she recorded five of his songs.
Shire's musical theatre work, always in collaboration with lyricist Richard Maltby, Jr. includes the two off-Broadway reviews Starting Here, Starting Now (Grammy nomination for Best Cast Album) and Closer Than Ever (Outer Critic's Circle Award for Best Musical) and the two Broadway shows Baby (Tony nominations for Best Musical and Best Score) and Big (Tony nomination for Best Score). All of these shows have had hundreds of regional and stock productions worldwide. A new musical entitled Take Flight premiered in London at the Menier Chocolate Factory in July 2007, with a separate production in Tokyo in November 2007. Previously concert versions were performed in Australia and Russia.[3][4]
He recently completed A Stream of Voices, a one-act opera, with libretto by Gene Scheer, for the Colorado Children's Chorale, which is scheduled to premiere in June 2008 in Denver.[5][6]
Shire's individual songs have been recorded by Barbra Streisand, Melissa Manchester, Maureen McGovern, Johnny Mathis, Billy Preston, Jennifer Warnes, John Pizzarelli and Pearl Bailey, among many others. He co-wrote with David Pomerantz "In Our Hands", the theme song for the United Nations World Summit for Children. He has also written individual songs with lyricists Sheldon Harnick ("Everlasting Light") and Ed Kleban.
Either for his film scores or for pop concerts of his music, he has conducted many orchestras, including The London Symphony Orchestra, The Los Angeles Philharmonic, The San Francisco Opera Orchestra, The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (2007)[7] Irish Film Orchestra, and the Munich Symphony.
He also wrote and composed many songs for the hit PBS children's TV series Shining Time Station, which starred his wife Didi Conn along with actor Brian O'Connor and comedian George Carlin.
He serves on the council of the Dramatists Guild of America[8] and is a Trustee of the Rockland Conservatory of Music and the Palisades (New York) Library.
David Lee Shire was inducted into the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame in 2006.
Shire has been married to actress Didi Conn since 1982; they have a son named Daniel who has been diagnosed with autism.[9] He also has a son, screenwriter Matthew Shire, with ex-wife Talia Shire.
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