Academy Award For Best Original Song

A. R. Rahman
Allah Rakha Rahman (born 6 January 1966 as A. S. Dileep Kumar) is an Indian composer, singer-songwriter, music producer, musician, multi-instrumentalist and philanthropist. Described as the world's most prominent and prolific film composer by Time, his works are notable for integrating eastern classical music with electronic music sounds, world music genres and traditional orchestral arrangements. He has won two Academy Awards, two Grammy Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe, four National Film Awards, fifteen Filmfare Awards, thirteen Filmfare Awards South in addition to numerous other awards and nominations. His extensive body of work for film and the stage earned him the nickname “the Mozart of Madras” and several Tamil commentators and fans have coined him the nickname Isai Puyal (English: Music Storm). In 2009, Time placed Rahman in its list of World's Most Influential People. The UK based World Music magazine Songlines named him one of 'Tomorrow's World Music Icons' in August 2011.

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Adam Clayton
Adam Charles Clayton (born 13 March 1960) is a musician, best known as the bassist of the Irish rock band U2. Clayton has resided in County Dublin since the time his family moved to Malahide when he was five years old in 1965. Clayton is well known for his bass playing on songs such as "New Year's Day", "Bullet the Blue Sky", "With or Without You", "Mysterious Ways", "Get on Your Boots", and "Magnificent". His work on No Line on the Horizon has been cited as his best bass playing. He has worked on several solo projects throughout his career, such as his work with fellow band member Larry Mullen Jr. on the theme of 1996's Mission: Impossible. Clayton, as a part of U2, has won 22 Grammy awards.
Clayton is the elder child of Brian and Jo Clayton, born on 13 March 1960 in Chinnor, Oxfordshire, England. When Clayton was five years old, his family moved from Oxfordshire to Malahide, County Dublin, where Clayton's brother Sebastian was born. The Clayton family became friends with the Evans family, with their sons Dik and Dave (more commonly known as The Edge), who were both in the original group, Feedback, that spawned U2.

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Adam Duritz
Adam Fredric Duritz (born August 1, 1964) is an American musician, songwriter, record producer, and film producer. He is best known for his role as frontman and vocalist for the rock band Counting Crows, in which he is a founding member and principal composer of their catalogue of songs.
Duritz has recorded solo material of his own and collaborated with other musical acts, leading him to branch out as the owner of at least two record labels, acting as his own A&R man. His work scoring music for film has been recognized by the music industry, notably with an award for co-writing the song "Accidentally in Love" for the movie Shrek 2 from BMI.
Duritz's lyrics have been described as "morose" and "tortured" and as "wordy introspection" and his vocals "expressive." He also suffers from depersonalization disorder, which he describes as "a dissociative disorder, which makes the world seem like it's not real," which contributes to the length of time between albums and the inspiration for many of his lyrics.

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Adam Schlesinger
Adam Schlesinger is an American songwriter, composer and record producer. He has been nominated for Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Grammy (3 noms, 1 win), and Golden Globe Awards. He is also a winner of the ASCAP Pop Music Award.
He is the bassist for the bands Fountains of Wayne, Ivy and Tinted Windows. He is an owner of Scratchie Records and Stratosphere Sound, a recording studio in New York City. Schlesinger grew up in Manhattan and Montclair, New Jersey.
Schlesinger was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for writing the title track of the Tom Hanks-directed film That Thing You Do! as well as two other songs for the film. Fountains of Wayne was nominated for two Grammy Awards in 2003 for Best New Artist and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for "Stacy's Mom".
Schlesinger and David Javerbaum were nominated for a 2008 Tony Award for Best Original Score for his music for the musical Cry-Baby.
Schlesinger and Javerbaum also received a 2009 Emmy nomination for Outstanding Music And Lyrics, for their song "Much Worse Things", performed by Elvis Costello and Stephen Colbert on the television special and album A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All! The album, co-written by Schlesinger and Javerbaum, and co-produced by Schlesinger and Steven M. Gold, also won the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.

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Aimee Mann
Aimee Mann (born September 8, 1960) is an American rock singer-songwriter, guitarist and bassist.
Aimee Mann grew up in Bon Air, Virginia, graduated from Open High School (Richmond, Virginia) in 1978 and attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, but dropped out to sing with her first punk rock band, the Young Snakes.^{[citation needed]} The band released the EP Bark Along with the Young Snakes in 1982, and a compilation album was issued in 2004.
In 1983, she co-founded with Berklee classmate and boyfriend Michael Hausman the new wave band 'Til Tuesday, which achieved success in 1985 with its first album, Voices Carry. The title song is said to be inspired by Hausman and Mann's breakup. The video became an MTV staple, winning the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist. Mann was featured on the Rush song "Time Stand Still" (from Hold Your Fire, 1987) which hit #3 on the American rock charts and became a minor UK hit, singing backup vocals and appearing in the music video. Her laughter is also heard at the start of "Force Ten," from the same album. With Mann playing an increasingly important role in songwriting, 'Til Tuesday released two more albums, Welcome Home and Everything's Different Now. Shortly after the release of Welcome Home, Mann told a writer for Nine-O-One Network Magazine that she was much more pleased with it than "Voices Carry", primarily because she felt it made more of a personal statement about her life. On their final tour, musician Jon Brion joined the band, which broke up in 1990 when Mann left to start her solo career.

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Al Hoffman
Al Hoffman (September 25, 1902 – July 21, 1960), a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame since 1984, was a hit songwriter active in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, usually co-writing with others and responsible for number one hits through each decade, many of which are still sung and recorded today. The popularity of Hoffman's song, "Mairzy Doats", co-written with Jerry Livingston and Milton Drake, was such that newspapers and magazines wrote about the craze. Time magazine titled one article "Our Mairzy Dotage". The New York Times simply wrote the headline, "That Song".
Hoffman's songs were recorded by Frank Sinatra ("Close To You", "I'm Gonna Live Until I Die"), Billy Eckstine ("I Apologize") Perry Como ("Papa Loves Mambo", "Hot Diggity"), Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong ("Who Walks In When I Walk Out"), Nat "King" Cole, Tony Bennett, the Merry Macs, Sophie Tucker, Eartha Kitt, Patsy Cline, Patti Page ("Allegheny Moon"), Bette Midler, and most everyone who was a star of that era. In October, 2007, Hoffman's "I'm Gonna Live Til I Die" was the lead single from Queen Latifah's album, "Trav'lin' Light".

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Al Kasha
Al Kasha (born 22 January 1937) is a Brooklyn–born composer, songwriter and arranger, as well as businessman. He is most noted for his years of collaboration with songwriter Joel Hirschhorn. The two wrote and collaborated many successful songs for many musical groups such as The Peppermint Rainbow's "Will You Be Staying After Sunday".
The songwriting duo won two Oscars for Best Song, "The Morning After" from The Poseidon Adventure in 1972 and "We May Never Love Like This Again" from The Towering Inferno in 1974.
Along with Hirshhorn, Kasha also received two Tony nominations for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Copperfield, two Grammy nominations and an Emmy, as well as four Golden Globe nominations and a People's Choice award. They also composed the theme song to the short-lived 1990s game show The Challengers.
Al is currently married to Ceil Kasha who handles Donna Summer's business affairs.

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Alan Jay Lerner
Alan Jay Lerner (August 31, 1918 – June 14, 1986) was an American lyricist and librettist. In collaboration with Frederick Loewe, he created some of the world's most popular and enduring works of musical theatre for both the stage and on film. He won three Tony Awards and three Academy Awards, among other honors.
Born in New York City, he was the son of Edith Adelson Lerner and Joseph Jay Lerner, whose brother, Samuel Alexander Lerner, was founder and owner of the Lerner Stores, a chain of dress shops. One of Lerner's cousins was the radio comedian/television game show panelist Henry Morgan. Alan Jay Lerner was educated at Bedales School in England, The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut, (where he wrote "The Choate Marching Song") and Harvard. He attended both Camp Androscoggin and Camp Greylock. At both Choate and Harvard, Lerner was a classmate of John F. Kennedy; at Choate they had worked together on the yearbook staff. Like Cole Porter at Yale and Richard Rodgers at Columbia, his career in musical theater began with his collegiate contributions, in Lerner's case to the annual Harvard Hasty Pudding musicals. During the summers of 1936 and 1937, Lerner studied at Juilliard. While attending Harvard, he lost his sight in his left eye due to an accident in the boxing ring. In 1957, Lerner and Leonard Bernstein, another of Lerner's college classmates, collaborated on "Lonely Men of Harvard," a tongue-in-cheek salute to their alma mater.

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Alan Menken
Alan Menken (born July 22, 1949) is a pianist and composer of American musical theatre and film.
Menken is best known for his scores for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. His scores for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas have each won him two Academy Awards. He also composed the scores for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Home on the Range, The Shaggy Dog, Enchanted, and most recently, Tangled. Menken has collaborated on several occasions with lyricists including Howard Ashman, Tim Rice, Glenn Slater, and Stephen Schwartz. With nineteen nominations and eight wins, Menken has won the third most Oscars of any person, after Walt Disney (twenty-two wins) and Alfred Newman (nine wins).

Menken was born in New York, NY to a Jewish family, the son of Judith and Norman Menken, a dentist. He developed an interest in music at an early age, studying piano and violin. He went to New Rochelle High School in New Rochelle, New York. He attended college as a pre-med student, but later changed his focus to music at NYU Steinhardt. After college, he attended the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop. He performed frequently in local clubs and worked as a composer of jingles and songs and as an accompanist.

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Alan Silvestri
Alan Anthony Silvestri (born March 26, 1950) is an American film composer and conductor.
Silvestri is best known for his collaborations with director Robert Zemeckis, having scored Romancing the Stone (1984), the Back to the Future trilogy (1985, 1989, 1990), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Death Becomes Her (1992), Forrest Gump (1994), Contact (1997), Cast Away (2000), The Polar Express (2004), Beowulf (2007), A Christmas Carol (2009) and The Avengers (2012).
Silvestri is also known for his work on Predator (1987) and Predator 2 (1990), both of which are considered preeminent examples of action/science fiction film scores. He has also begun a collaboration with director Stephen Sommers, scoring the films The Mummy Returns in 2001, Van Helsing in 2004, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra in 2009. His most recent work included The Avengers in 2012.
Silvestri has also composed music for television shows, including TJ Hooker (one episode), Starsky & Hutch (three episodes), CHiPs, and Manimal (all but one episode).

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Albert Hammond
Albert Hammond OBE (born 18 May 1944) is an English singer, songwriter and record producer from Gibraltar.
Hammond was born in London, England, where his family had been evacuated to from Gibraltar during World War II. His family returned to Gibraltar shortly after his birth, and there he grew up. In 1960, he started in music with Gibraltarian band 'The Diamond Boys', which had no real commercial success, but played a part in Spain's introduction to popular music. The Diamond Boys performed at the first nightclubs in Madrid to stage modern bands alongside Spanish rock and roll pioneers such as Miguel Ríos. In 1966 Hammond co-founded the British vocal group The Family Dogg, scoring a UK Top 10 hit with "A Way of Life" in 1969.
He also wrote songs for others with frequent collaborator Mike Hazlewood. These include "Little Arrows" for Leapy Lee, "Make Me An Island" (1969) (which Hammond himself re-recorded in 1979, in a Spanish disco-style version), and "You're Such a Good Looking Woman" (1970) for Joe Dolan, "Gimme Dat Ding" for The Pipkins in 1970 (itself a cover from the Freddie and the Dreamers album, Oliver in the Overworld), "Good Morning Freedom" for Blue Mink, "Freedom Come, Freedom Go" for The Fortunes in 1971 and "The Air That I Breathe" which was a hit for The Hollies in 1974. In 1971. Hammond also sang on Michael Chapman's fourth album, Wrecked Again, and worked briefly with The Magic Lanterns on recordings of his and Hazlewood's songs and other material.

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Alex North
Alex North (December 4, 1910 – September 8, 1991) was an American composer who wrote the first jazz-based film score (A Streetcar Named Desire) and one of the first modernist scores written in Hollywood (Viva Zapata!).
Born Isadore Soifer in Chester, Pennsylvania to Russian Jewish parents, North was an original composer probably even by the classical music standards of the day. However, he managed to integrate his modernism into typical film music leitmotif structure, rich with themes. One of these became the famous song, "Unchained Melody". Nominated for fifteen Oscars but unsuccessful each time, North is one of only two film composers to receive the Lifetime Achievement Academy Award, the other being Ennio Morricone. North's frequent collaborator as orchestrator was the avant-garde composer Henry Brant. He won the 1968 Golden Globe award for his music to The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968).
His best-known film scores include The Rainmaker (1956), Spartacus (1960), The Misfits (1961),The Children's Hour (1961) Cleopatra (1963), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), The Devil's Brigade (1968), and Dragonslayer (1981). He composed the music for "The Wonderful Country" in a Mexican and southwestern US motif.

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Allan Rich
Allan Rich, (born Benjamin Norman Schultz; February 8, 1926) is an American character actor, author, and activist.
Allan Rich was one of the many alleged communist sympathizers blacklisted in the 1950s Hollywood blacklist.
Rich is the co-founder of non-profit organization We Care About Kids, which produces educational short films for middle and high school youths.

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Allie Wrubel
Allie Wrubel (January 15, 1905 – December 13, 1973) was an American composer and songwriter.
Born in Middletown, Connecticut, Wrubel attended Wesleyan University and Columbia University before working in dance bands. He began his musical career in Greenwich Village, New York where he roomed with his close friend James Cagney. He played saxophone and clarinet for a variety of famous swing bands. In 1934 he moved to Hollywood to work for Warner Bros. as a contract song writer. He contributed material to a large number of movies, including those of the famous Busby Berkeley before moving to Disney in 1947.
Wrubel collaborated with lyricist Ray Gilbert on the song "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" from the film Song of the South which won the Oscar for Best Song in 1947.
Wrubel also contributed to the films Make Mine Music, Duel in the Sun, I Walk Alone, Melody Time, Tulsa, Never Steal Anything Small and Midnight Lace. The lyricists with whom he collaborated included Abner Silver, Herb Magidson, Charles Newman, Mort Dixon and Ned Washington. When he died, at Twentynine Palms, California, he left a lengthy catalogue of songs.

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Allison Moorer
Allison Moorer (born June 21, 1972) is an American alternative country singer and the younger sister of Shelby Lynne. She signed to MCA Nashville in 1998 and made her debut on the U.S. Billboard country charts with the release of her debut single "A Soft Place to Fall", which reached #73.
Since the release of her debut album Alabama Song, she released seven albums and 11 singles, five of which reached positions on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.
Allison was raised in Monroeville, Alabama, just north of Mobile. Raised on George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Emmylou Harris, she sang harmonies as a toddler, eventually thinking she'd make a career of it. Following the murder-suicide of her parents (perpetrated by her father) in 1986, she moved into her aunt and uncle's home.
Not long afterwards, sister Shelby Lynne moved to Nashville for a career in music, and after her high school graduation, Moorer followed. She sang harmonies with her sister for a while but returned to Alabama to earn a degree in public relations. She skipped the graduation ceremony to move back to Nashville.

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Amy Adams
Amy Lou Adams (born August 20, 1974) is an American actress and singer. Adams was born in Vicenza, Italy to American parents, and began her performing career on stage in dinner theaters, before making her screen debut in the 1999 black comedy film Drop Dead Gorgeous. After a series of television guest appearances and roles in B movies, she was cast in the role of Brenda Strong in 2002's Catch Me If You Can, but her breakthrough role was in the 2005 independent film Junebug, playing Ashley Johnsten, for which she received critical acclaim and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Adams subsequently starred in Disney's 2007 film Enchanted, a critical and commercial success, and received a Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance as Princess Giselle. She received her second Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations the following year for her role as a young nun, Sister James, in Doubt. Though she has appeared in a range of dramatic and comedic roles, Adams has gained a reputation for playing characters with cheerful and sunny dispositions. Adams starred in Sunshine Cleaning with Emily Blunt and Alan Arkin, and the following year appeared as Amelia Earhart in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. She appeared in Julie & Julia in 2009 portraying writer Julie Powell followed by Leap Year in 2010. Her recent role as Charlene Fleming in The Fighter earned Adams her third Academy Award nomination, her third Golden Globe Award, second BAFTA Award, and fifth Screen Actors Guild Award nominations. In 2011, Adams appeared in the critically acclaimed musical film The Muppets alongside Jason Segel. She is scheduled to play Lois Lane in the upcoming Superman reboot Man of Steel in 2013.

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Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber Kt. (born 22 March 1948) is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre.
Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. He has also gained a number of honours, including a knighthood in 1992, followed by a peerage from the British Government for services to Music, seven Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, fourteen Ivor Novello Awards, seven Olivier Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006.
Several of his songs have been widely recorded and were hits outside of their parent musicals, notably "The Music of the Night" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" and "You Must Love Me" from Evita, "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and "Memory" from Cats.

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André Previn
André George Previn, KBE (born Andreas Ludwig Priwin; April 6, 1929) is a German-American pianist, conductor, and composer. He is considered one of the most versatile musicians in the world and is the winner of four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings.
Previn was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Charlotte (née Epstein) and Jack Previn, who was a lawyer, judge, and music teacher. He is said to be "a distant relative of" the composer Gustav Mahler. However, In a pre-concert public interview at the Lincoln Center, in May 2012, Previn laughed at the suggestion that he is related to Mahler. The year of his birth is uncertain. Whilst most published reports give 1929, Previn himself has stated that 1930 is his birth year. This situation is a consequence of his the family losing Previn's birth certificate when they left Germany in 1938.^{[citation needed]} His elder brother was director Steve Previn.^{[citation needed]} The Previn family, which was Jewish,^{[citation needed]} emigrated to the United States in 1939 to escape the Nazi regime in Germany.^{[citation needed]}

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Ann Ronell
Ann Rosenblatt, known as Ann Ronell (December 28, 1906 or 1908—December 25, 1993) was an American composer and lyricist best known for the jazz standard "Willow Weep for Me" (1932).
Ronell was born in Omaha, Nebraska, studied music with Walter Piston, and was married to producer Lester Cowan. The couple had no children.
Ronell was, along with Dorothy Fields, Dana Suesse, and Kay Swift, one of the first successful Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley female composers or librettists. She cowrote Disney's first hit song, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" with Frank Churchill for the cartoon Three Little Pigs (1933).
She wrote the lyrics and music for the Broadway musical Count Me In (1942) She wrote songs for movies including Champagne Waltz (1937) and Blockade (1938) and wrote the scores for movies including the Cowan produced The Story of G. I. Joe (1945), the film adaptation of the Weill/Nash musical One Touch of Venus (1948), and the Marx Brothers Love Happy (1949). She served as musical director for Main Street to Broadway (1953). She was nominated for Best Song, "Linda," and with co-composer Louis Applebaum for Best Score, for her work on The Story of G. I. Joe.

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Anne Preven
Anne Preven is an American songwriter and musician, originally from New York. She has co-written songs for Beyoncé (Listen from Dreamgirls), Katy Perry, Madonna, Natalie Imbruglia, Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Sinéad O'Connor, Charice, The Hush Sound, Jordin Sparks, Miranda Cosgrove, Black Veil Brides, Pnau, Pixie Lott, Zac Brown Band and more.
Anne Preven grew up in Larchmont, NY. She started playing classical violin at age 5, but gave it up as a teenager. She is a Harvard graduate and began writing songs while a student.
Preven was the lead singer of the Los Angeles band Ednaswap. Along with songwriting partner Scott Cutler, she wrote the Ednaswap song "Torn" that was later covered by Australian actress/singer Natalie Imbruglia. Torn reached number two in the UK Singles Chart and number one in airplay around the world. It was number one on the Billboard Airplay chart for 14 weeks. The single went on to sell over a million copies in the United Kingdom alone.
In 2007 she co-wrote "Listen" for the motion picture adaptation of Dreamgirls. The Broadcast Film Critics Association awarded "Listen" a Critic's Choice Award for "Best Song" that year. The song was also nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award in the same category.

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Annette O'Toole
Annette O'Toole (born April 1, 1952) is an American actress, dancer, and singer-songwriter. She is most recently known for portraying Martha Kent, the mother of Clark Kent on the television series Smallville.
O'Toole was born Annette Toole in Houston, Texas, the daughter of Dorothy Geraldine (née Niland) and William West Toole, Jr. Her mother taught dance, something O'Toole learned at the age of 3. She started taking acting lessons after family moved to Los Angeles when she was 13; her first role was on The Danny Kaye Show. She also had guest appearances in shows such as My Three Sons (1960), The Virginian, Gunsmoke, Hawaii Five-O, and The Partridge Family.
O'Toole's first major film role was as a jaded beauty pageant contestant in the 1975 satire Smile; she got the role after doing an impression of a "dead cockroach" at the audition. She also appeared as Robby Benson's tutor/girlfriend in the college basketball story One on One in 1977. She co-starred opposite Gary Busey in the 1980 film Foolin' Around. In 1981, she starred in the HBO onstage production of Vanities, as well as in the TV movie Stand By Your Man, which detailed the life of country music legend Tammy Wynette. Later on in 1982, she appeared briefly as Nick Nolte's girlfriend in 48 Hours. That same year, she played Alice Perrin in Cat People and in 1983 she played Clark Kent's boyhood first love Lana Lang in Superman III.

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Annie Lennox
Ann "Annie" Lennox, OBE (born 25 December 1954), is a Scottish singer-songwriter, political activist and philanthropist. After achieving minor success in the late 1970s as part of the New Wave band The Tourists, she and fellow musician David A. Stewart went on to achieve major international success in the 1980s as Eurythmics. Lennox is the most recognized female artist at the Brit Awards, winning a total of eight awards. She has also been named the "Brits Champion of Champions".
Lennox embarked on a solo career in the 1990s with her debut album, Diva (1992), which produced several hit singles including "Why" and "Walking on Broken Glass". To date, she has released five solo studio albums and a compilation album, The Annie Lennox Collection (2009). She is the recipient of eight Brit Awards, four Grammy Awards and an MTV Video Music Award. In 2002, Lennox received a Billboard Century Award; the highest accolade from Billboard Magazine. In 2004, she won both the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Into the West", written for the soundtrack to the feature film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

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Antonio Banderas
José Antonio Domínguez Banderas (born 10 August 1960), better known as Antonio Banderas, is a Spanish film actor, film director, film producer and singer. He began his acting career at age 19 with a series of films by director Pedro Almodóvar and then appeared in high-profile Hollywood films, especially in the 1990s, including Assassins, Evita, Interview with the Vampire, Philadelphia, Desperado, The Mask of Zorro, Spy Kids, the Shrek sequels and Puss in Boots.
Banderas was born in Málaga, Andalucía, Spain, in 1960, to Ana Banderas, a school teacher, and José Domínguez, a police officer in the Guardia Civil. He has a younger brother, Javier. Although the family name is Domínguez, he took his mother's surname as his stage name. As a child, he wanted to become a professional football player until a broken foot sidelined his dreams at the age of fifteen. He went on to enroll in some drama classes, eventually joining a theater troupe that toured all over Spain. His work in the theater, and his performances on the streets, eventually landed him a spot with the National Theatre of Spain.

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Arne Glimcher
Arnold "Arne" Glimcher (born March 12, 1938) is an American art dealer, film producer and director. He is the founder of The Pace Gallery and is widely known as one of the art world's most powerful dealers. Glimcher has also produced and directed several films, including The Mambo Kings and Just Cause.
Glimcher was born in Duluth, Minnesota. He graduated from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Boston University. In 1960, Glimcher founded the Pace Gallery in Boston. In 1963, Glimcher moved the gallery to New York City. Today there are four gallery locations in New York and an additional gallery in Beijing. The Pace Gallery represents contemporary artists including Chuck Close, Tara Donovan, David Hockney, Maya Lin and Kiki Smith. It also represents the estates of several artists, including Pablo Picasso, Agnes Martin, Ad Reinhardt, and Alexander Calder. Today, Glimcher, serves as Chairman of the Pace Gallery. During his career he has worked closely with important artists, including Jean Dubuffet, Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Nevelson, and Lucas Samaras. In 2007, Glimcher received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

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Arthur Schwartz
Arthur Schwartz (November 25, 1900 – September 3, 1984) was an American composer and film producer.
Schwartz supported his legal studies at New York University and postgraduate studies at Columbia University by playing piano before concentrating his talents on vaudeville, Broadway theatre and Hollywood.
Among his Broadway musicals are The Band Wagon, The Gay Life, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Jennie, and By the Beautiful Sea. His films include the MGM musical The Band Wagon with lyricist Howard Dietz.
Schwartz worked for Columbia Pictures as a producer, his work including the 1944 musical Cover Girl.
In 1972, Schwartz was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He was inducted in 1981 into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
His son Jonathan is a popular radio personality and sometime musician. His son Paul Schwartz is a composer, conductor, pianist and producer.

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Artie Shaw
Arthur Jacob Arshawsky (May 23, 1910 – December 30, 2004), better known as Artie Shaw, was an American clarinetist, composer, and bandleader. He was also the author of both fiction and non-fiction writings.
Widely regarded as "one of jazz's finest clarinetists", Shaw led one of America's most popular big bands of the late 1930s and early '40s. Their signature song, a 1938 version of Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine", was a wildly successful single and one of the era's defining recordings. Musically restless, Shaw was also an early proponent of Third Stream, which blended classical and jazz, and recorded some small-group sessions that flirted with be-bop before retiring from music in 1954.
Born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky in New York City, Shaw grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, where, according to his autobiography his natural introversion was deepened by local antisemitism. Shaw began learning the saxophone when he was 13 years old, and by the age of 16, he switched to the clarinet and left home to tour with a band. Returning to New York, he became a session musician through the early 1930s. From 1925 until 1936, Shaw performed with many bands and orchestras, including those of Johnny Caverello and Austin Wylie. In 1929 and 1930 he played with Irving Aaronson's Commanders, where he was exposed to symphonic music, which he would later incorporate in his arrangements.

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Ary Barroso
Ary Barroso(Portuguese pronunciation: [a'ɾi ba'ʁozu]) (November 7, 1903 – February 9, 1964) was a Brazilian composer, pianist, soccer commentator, and talent-show host on radio and TV. He was one of Brazil's most successful songwriters in the first half of the 20th century.
Barroso's two best-known compositions are the sambas "Aquarela do Brasil" ("Watercolor of Brazil"), written in 1939, and "Na Baixa do Sapateiro" ("Bahia"), composed a year earlier. "Watercolor of Brazil" was featured in Saludos Amigos (1942) and "Na Baixa do Sapateiro" in The Three Caballeros (1944), both Disney films. The two songs became international hits, and have been recorded by hundreds of artists around the world. Among his major interpreters are Carmen Miranda and João Gilberto.
In 1945, his song "Rio de Janeiro", featured in the 1944 film Brazil, was one of the five finalists nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
His song "Aquarela do Brasil" was used as the main theme of the 1985 film "Brazil".

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Ayn Robbins
Ayn Robbins is a lyricist, poet, and painter. She is best known for co-writing with Carol Connors the lyrics for two Academy Award and Grammy nominated songs, "Gonna Fly Now" from Rocky (1976; music by Bill Conti) and "Someone's Waiting for You" from The Rescuers (1977; music by Sammy Fain).

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Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand (/ˈstraɪsænd/; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, writer, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, five Emmy Awards including one Daytime Emmy, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award.
She is one of the most commercially and critically successful entertainers in modern entertainment history, with more than 71.5 million albums shipped in the United States and 140 million albums sold worldwide. She is the best-selling female artist on the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) Top Selling Artists list, the only female recording artist in the top ten, and the only artist outside of the rock and roll genre. Along with Frank Sinatra, Cher, and Shirley Jones, she shares the distinction of being awarded an acting Oscar and also recording a number-one single on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.

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Barry DeVorzon
Barry De Vorzon (born July 31, 1934, New York City) is an American singer, songwriter, producer, and composer. His first composing big hit was the rock song "Dreamin'," sung by Johnny Burnette in 1960, although he had a number-one hit previously called "Just Married," which he wrote for Marty Robbins in 1958. Dorsey Burnette (who he was managing) and De Vorzon co-wrote several of Dorsey's hits ("Hey, Little One"; "Big Rock Candy Mountain"; "Red Roses"; "Noah's Ark").
De Vorzon founded Valiant Records later in the 1960s, during which time he signed the Association and produced its first single, a cover of the Bob Dylan tune "One Too Many Mornings."
De Vorzon wrote "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight" for the Cascades, but the group did not record it. In 1963, De Vorzon recorded the song himself, with his group Barry and the Tamerlanes.
He composed the soundtracks to many 1970s and 1980s films, and one of the tunes, "Cotton's Dream" (from Bless the Beasts and Children) was retitled "Nadia's Theme" and re-released by A&M Records for the television soap opera The Young and the Restless. "Nadia's Theme" hit #8 on the US Top 40 in 1976 and the album from which it was taken peaked at #42 on the Billboard 200; in 1977, it won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement. The main title song, "Bless the Beasts and Children," was recorded by the Carpenters and received an Academy Award nomination.

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Ben Oakland
Ben Oakland (September 24, 1907 - August 26, 1979) was an American composer, lyricist and pianist most active from the 1920s through the 1940s. He composed mainly for Broadway and vaudeville, though he also worked on several Hollywood scores including for the film My Little Chickadee.
Oakland often composed music only, collaborating with lyricists including Oscar Hammerstein II, Bob Russell, Milton Drake, L. Wolfe Gilbert, and Artie Shaw. Notable compositions include "Java Jive" (A huge hit for The Ink Spots and covered by The Manhattan Transfer), "I'll Take Romance", and "I'm A Hundred Percent For You".
The two songs that Oakland wrote with Oscar Hammerstein II are "I'll Take Romance" and "A Mist Over the Moon." The latter, which was written for a 1938 picture called The Lady Objects won Hammerstein and Oakland an Oscar nomination. The former, which was written for a 1937 film starring Grace Moore, won no awards but is frequently performed. June Christy sang it, to an arrangement by Pete Rugolo, on the 1954 album Something Cool.

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Benoît Charest
Benoît Charest (born in 1964) is a Canadian guitarist and film score composer from Quebec. He is best known for the soundtrack of the animated film Les Triplettes de Belleville (2003), for which he won a César Award for Best Music Written for a Film as well as a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Music. The song "Belleville Rendez-vous", in particular, earned him an Academy Award nomination as well as a Grammy Award nomination.
In the late 1990s, Benoît Charest attended a performance in Montreal by DJ Mad Max (a previous alias used by Maxime Morin, who currently performs under the name DJ Champion). After the show, Charest approached Morin with a business proposal; the two men went on to become co-owners of Ben & Max Studios — a company specializing in jingles and soundtracks. Ben & Max Studios became quite successful, however in 2001 Morin sold his share in the company back to Charest in order to continue his own personal musical career.
In 2003 Morin also assisted Charest on the soundtrack for Les Triplettes de Belleville. Morin performed the bass and percussion on the song "Belleville Rendez-vous" and he also performed the song live, along with Charest and his then wife, vocalist Béatrice Bonifassi, at the 76th Academy Awards ceremony — Morin played percussion on a bicycle during the live performance.

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Betty Box
Betty Evelyn Box (25 September 1915 - 15 January 1999) was a prolific British film producer. Usually credited as Betty E. Box, she is considered one of the best of her generation, with a flair for making genuinely popular British films.
Born in Beckenham, Kent, she entered the motion picture industry in 1942, joining her brother Sydney Box and his wife Muriel at Verity Films, where she helped produce more than 200 wartime propaganda shorts. Following World War II, she made an easy transition to feature films, beginning with The Years Between in 1946. When her brother assumed control of Gainsborough Pictures that year, he named her Head of Production at the Poole Street, Hoxton studio, where she produced ten films during the next two years. While tight budgets and shooting schedules compromised the quality of some of them, others - such as When the Bough Breaks (1947) - proved to be among the most politically interesting films of the period. She was also known for the trio of popular Huggetts films, starting with Here Come the Huggetts in 1948 and followed by Vote for Huggett and The Huggetts Abroad in 1949.

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Beyoncé Knowles
Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter (née Beyoncé Giselle Knowles; September 4, 1981), known mononymously as Beyoncé (

/biˈjɒnseɪ/ bee-YON-say), is an American singer, songwriter, record producer and actress. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, she enrolled in various performing arts schools and was first exposed to singing and dancing competitions as a child. Knowles rose to fame in the late 1990s as the lead singer of the R&B girl group Destiny's Child, one of the world's best-selling girl groups of all time.
During the hiatus of Destiny's Child, Knowles released her debut solo album, Dangerously in Love, in 2003, which spawned two number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100—"Crazy in Love" and "Baby Boy"—and became one of the most successful albums of that year, earning her a then record-tying five Grammy Awards. Following the disbandment of Destiny's Child in 2005, Knowles released her second solo album, B'Day, in 2006, which spawned the top 10 singles "Déjà Vu", "Irreplaceable" and "Beautiful Liar". Her third solo album I Am... Sasha Fierce (2008), spawned the hit singles "If I Were a Boy", "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", "Halo" and "Sweet Dreams". The album helped Knowles earn six Grammys in 2010, breaking the record for most Grammy Awards won by a female artist in one night. Knowles' fourth solo album, 4 (2011), became her fourth consecutive number one album on the Billboard 200 as a solo artist. This made her the third artist in history to have her first four studio albums debut atop the chart.

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Bill Conti
William "Bill" Conti (born April 13, 1942) is an American film music composer who is frequently the conductor at the Academy Awards ceremony.
Conti, an Italian American, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the son of Lucetta and William Conti. He graduated from North Miami High School in 1959. He is a past winner of the Silver Knight Award presented by the Miami Herald. He is a graduate of Louisiana State University, and also studied at the Juilliard School of Music.
His big break into celebrity came in 1976, when he was hired to compose the music for a small United Artists film called Rocky. The film became a phenomenon, and Conti's training montage tune, "Gonna Fly Now" topped the Billboard singles chart in 1977. He also composed music for the sequels Rocky II (1979), Rocky III (1982), Rocky V (1990) and Rocky Balboa (2006).
Conti also worked for some other films and, eventually, for television series. In 1981, he wrote the music for the James Bond film, For Your Eyes Only, when John Barry was unwilling to return to the United Kingdom for tax reasons, and provided the score for playwright Jason Miller's film version of his Pulitzer Prize winning play That Championship Season the following year.

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Björk
Björk Guðmundsdóttir (

/ˈbjɜrk/; [ˈpjœr̥k ˈkvʏðmʏntsˌtoʊhtɪr] (

listen); born 21 November 1965), known as Björk, is an Icelandic singer-songwriter. Her musical style is eclectic and she has achieved recognition in rock, jazz, electronic dance music, classical, and folk.
Björk's 1990s singles "It's Oh So Quiet", "Army of Me" and "Hyperballad" charted in the UK Top 10.^{[citation needed]} Her record label, One Little Indian, reported that by 2003 she had sold more than 15 million albums worldwide. She has acquired a high level of critical acclaim. She has won four BRIT Awards, four MTV Video Music Awards, one MOJO Award, three UK Music Video Awards, and, in 2010, the Polar Music Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, in recognition for her "deeply personal music and lyrics, her precise arrangements and her unique voice".
Björk has also been nominated for twelve Grammy Awards, one Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards. She won the Best Actress Award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival for her performance in Dancer in the Dark. She was ranked thirty-sixth in VH1's "The 100 Greatest Women in Rock and Roll", eighth in MTV's "22 Greatest Voices in Music", and sixtieth in Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Singers of All Time".

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Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (

/ˈdɪlən/), born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, is an American singer-songwriter, musician and artist. He has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly reluctant figurehead of social unrest. A number of Dylan's early songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", became anthems for the US civil rights and anti-war movements. Leaving his initial base in the culture of folk music behind, Dylan's six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone" has been described as radically altering the parameters of popular music in 1965. However, his recordings employing electric instruments attracted denunciation and criticism from others in the folk movement.
Dylan's lyrics incorporated a variety of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed hugely to the then burgeoning counterculture. Initially inspired by the songs of Woody Guthrie,Robert Johnson, and Hank Williams, as well as the music and performance styles of Buddy Holly and Little Richard, Dylan has both amplified and personalized musical genres. His recording career, spanning fifty years, has explored numerous distinct traditions in American song—from folk, blues and country to gospel, rock and roll, and rockabilly to English, Scottish, and Irish folk music, embracing even jazz and swing.

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Bob Merrill
Bob Merrill (May 17, 1921 – February 17, 1998) was an American songwriter, theatrical composer, lyricist, and screenwriter.
Merrill was born Henry Merrill Levan in Atlantic City, New Jersey and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Following a stint with the Army during World War II, he moved to Hollywood, where he worked as a dialogue director for Columbia Pictures. He began his songwriting career writing tunes for Dorothy Shay. One of his first major hits was a country song co-written by Moon Mullican in 1950 entitled "You Don't Have To Be a Baby To Cry", and the 1950 novelty song "If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake", co-written with Al Hoffman and Clem Watts and recorded by Eileen Barton.
The other eight songs which round out the Top Ten for which he is most well-known include
Guy Mitchell recorded many of Merrill's songs including "Sparrow in the Tree Top", She Wears Red Feathers, and "My Truly, Truly Fair".
Merrill made his Broadway debut in 1957 with New Girl in Town, a musical adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie. His greatest theatrical success was the Barbra Streisand vehicle Funny Girl, which introduced the standard "People" and "Don't Rain on My Parade". When the stage show was adapted for the screen, he and songwriting partner Jule Styne were asked to write a title tune, which eventually garnered them both Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Song entitled "Funny Girl". Producer David Merrick employed Merrill to write additional songs for the musical Hello, Dolly/ Merrill contributed two songs, "Motherhood March" and "Elegance", and some additional lyrics to Jerry Herman's It Takes a Woman . Merrill did not accept billing or credit for his additions to the score.

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Bob Seger
Robert Clark "Bob" Seger (born May 6, 1945) is an American rock and roll singer-songwriter, guitarist and pianist.
As a locally successful Detroit-area artist, he performed and recorded as Bob Seger and the Last Heard and Bob Seger System throughout the 1960s. By the early 1970s, he had dropped the "System" from his recordings, and he continued to strive for broader success with other various bands. In 1973, he put together The Silver Bullet Band, an evolving group of Detroit-area musicians, with whom he became most successful. In 1976, he achieved a national breakout with the album Night Moves. On his studio albums, he also worked extensively with the Alabama-based Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, which appeared on several of Seger's best-selling singles and albums.
A roots rocker with a classic raspy, shouting voice, Seger wrote and recorded songs that dealt with blue-collar themes and was an exemplar of heartland rock. Seger has recorded many hits, including "Night Moves", "Turn the Page", "We've Got Tonight", "Against the Wind", and "Like a Rock", and also co-wrote the Eagles' number-one hit "Heartache Tonight". His iconic recording of "Old Time Rock and Roll" was named one of the Songs of the Century in 2001.

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Bob Telson
Robert "Bob" Eria Telson (born May 14, 1949) is an American composer, songwriter, and pianist best known for his work in musical theater and film, for which he has received Tony, Pulitzer, and Academy Award nominations. He is currently living and working in Argentina.
Robert Eria Telson was born in Cannes, France, in 1949. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, son of Paula (née Blackman) and David Telson. He began studying piano when he was five years old. By nine had already performed a Mozart piece on television and given a concert of his own compositions. At 14, he wrote 72 love songs for his first girlfriend, Margie. At 15 and 16 he studied organ, counterpoint and harmony in France with the teacher Nadia Boulanger. He followed this with a degree in music from Harvard University in 1970. Telson also played organ and composed original songs for a rock band called The Bristols while he was a high school student at Poly Prep in Brooklyn, New York. Several of these were recorded at Decca studios but never released. At Harvard, he formed another group called Groundspeed, which brought him back to the Decca studios in 1967 to record a demo recording of his songs "L-12 East" and "In a Dream" with producer Dick Jacobs. This was released by the label in 1968. Groundspeed also featured high school classmate and session drummer Mike Jacobs along with Harvard friends Jesse Miller (guitar), Rick Scheuer (bass) and Ken Kyle (vocals). After the demise of Groundspeed, Telson formed the band Revolutionary Music Collective, probably most notable for having Bonnie Raitt, then Telson's occasional girlfriend, singing lead vocals.

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Bono
Paul David Hewson (born 10 May 1960), most commonly known by his stage name Bono (/ˈbɒnoʊ/ BON-oh), is an Irish singer, musician, and humanitarian best known for being the main vocalist of the Dublin-based rock band U2. Bono was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, and attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School where he met his future wife, Alison Stewart, and the future members of U2. Bono writes almost all U2 lyrics, often using political, social, and religious themes. During their early years, Bono's lyrics contributed to U2's rebellious and spiritual tone. As the band matured, his lyrics became inspired more by personal experiences shared with members of U2.
Outside the band, he has collaborated and recorded with numerous artists, is managing director and a managing partner of Elevation Partners, and has refurbished and owns The Clarence Hotel in Dublin with The Edge. Bono is also widely known for his activism concerning Africa, for which he co-founded DATA, EDUN, the ONE Campaign and Product Red. He has organised and played in several benefit concerts and has met with influential politicians. Bono has been praised and criticised for his activism and involvement with U2. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, was granted an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, and was named as a Person of the Year by Time, among other awards and nominations.

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Boyce and Hart
Tommy Boyce (born Sidney Thomas Boyce, September 29, 1939 — November 23, 1994) and Bobby Hart (born Robert Luke Harshman, February 18, 1939, Phoenix, Arizona) were a prolific songwriting duo, best known for the songs they wrote for The Monkees.
Hart's father was a church minister and he himself served in the Army after leaving high school. Upon discharge, he travelled to Los Angeles seeking a career as a singer. Boyce was separately pursuing a career as a singer. After being rejected numerous times, Boyce took his father's suggestion to write a song called "Be My Guest" for rock and roll star Fats Domino. He waited six hours at Domino's hotel room to present him with the demo, and got Domino to promise to listen to the song. The song hit #8 in the US and #11 in the UK, becoming Domino's biggest hit there in several years, and sold over a million copies. Boyce met Hart in 1959, and the following year played guitar on Hart's single "Girl In The Window," which flopped, but marked the first time he used the name Bobby Hart, since his manager shortened it to fit the label.

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Bret McKenzie
Bret Peter Tarrant McKenzie (born 29 June 1976) is a comedian, actor, musician and producer, best known for being one half of the Grammy Award winning musical comedy duo Flight of the Conchords along with Jemaine Clement. McKenzie served as music supervisor for the 2011 film The Muppets, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for the song "Man or Muppet".
McKenzie was born in Wellington, New Zealand. He is a former member of The Black Seeds. He released an album called Prototype as Video Kid and is a member of the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra. McKenzie attended Clifton Terrace Model School ("model" refers to a standard school for training teachers as opposed to modeling), Wellington College and then Victoria University of Wellington where he met Jemaine Clement who was also studying film and theatre. Together, they were members of So You're a Man and they later formed Flight of the Conchords.
As Flight of the Conchords they have toured internationally and released four CDs: Folk the World Tour in 2002,The Distant Future (which won the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album) in 2007, the Grammy nominated Flight of the Conchords in 2008, and I Told You I Was Freaky in 2009. The Conchords produced a six-part improvisational comedy radio program for the BBC and have appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, The Late Show with David Letterman and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. After a successful appearance in 2005 on HBOs One Night Stand, the Conchords were offered their own 12-part HBO series Flight of the Conchords. Its first season ran from June to September 2007, and its second season premiered on HBO 18 January 2009.

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Bronisław Kaper
Bronisław Kaper (February 5, 1902 – April 26, 1983) was a Polish film composer who scored films and musical theater in Germany, France, and the USA. The American immigration authorities misspelled his name as Bronislau Kaper. He was also variously credited as Bronislaw Kaper, Bronislaw Kapper, Benjamin Kapper, and Edward Kane.
Kaper is now perhaps best remembered as the composer of the jazz standards "Invitation" (with words by Paul Francis Webster) and "On Green Dolphin Street" the latter for the 1947 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film of the same name. He also scored the MGM film musical Lili (1953) and the TV series The F.B.I. (1965–1974).
Bronisław Kaper began playing the piano at the age of six, and soon demonstrated considerable talent on this instrument. He studied composition and piano at the Warsaw Conservatory, and law at Warsaw University, in deference to his father's wishes. Soon after completing his studies, Kaper went to Berlin - then a city with many theaters and cabarets, where many artists from Eastern Europe - mainly Russia, Poland and Hungary were trying their luck.^{[citation needed]}

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Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949), nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter-performer who records and tours with the E Street Band. Springsteen is widely known for his brand of heartland rock, poetic lyrics, and Americana sentiments centered on his native New Jersey.
Springsteen's recordings have included both commercially accessible rock albums and more somber folk-oriented works. His most successful studio albums, Born in the U.S.A. and Born to Run, showcase a talent for finding grandeur in the struggles of daily American life; he has sold more than 65 million albums in the United States and more than 120 million worldwide and he has earned numerous awards for his work, including 21 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes and an Academy Award. He is widely regarded by many as one of the most influential songwriters of the 20th century, and in 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him as the 23rd Greatest Artist of all time.
Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and spent his childhood and high school years in Freehold Borough. He lived on South Street in Freehold Borough and attended Freehold Borough High School. His father, Douglas Frederick Springsteen, was of Dutch and Irish ancestry and worked, among other vocations, as a bus driver, although he was frequently unemployed; his surname is Dutch for jump stone. His mother, Adele Ann (née Zerilli), was a legal secretary and was of Italian ancestry. His maternal grandfather was born in Vico Equense, a city near Naples. He has two younger sisters, Virginia and Pamela. Pamela had a brief film career, but left acting to pursue still photography full time; she took photos for the Human Touch and Lucky Town albums.

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Bruno Coulais
Bruno Coulais (born 13 January 1954) is a French composer, most widely known for his music on film soundtracks. He recently composed the score for the animated film, The Secret of Kells, released 12 March 2010.
Coulais was born in Paris; his father is from Vendée and his mother was born in Paris. Coulais began his musical education on the violin and piano, aiming to become a composer of contemporary classical music. However, a series of acquaintances gradually re-oriented him towards film music. Coulais met François Reichenbach, who asked him in 1977 to sonorize his documentary México mágico and the producer Marie Bodin who permit to compose the first soundtracks for Jacques Davila. Until the end of the 1990s, he remained low-profile, composing mainly for television. His name can often be found from TV films by Gérard Marx and Laurent Heynemann. He also composed the soundtracks for Christine Pascal's 1992 film Le petit prince a dit, and Agnès Merlet's Le fils du requin in 1993.
In 1994, he met the television producer Josée Dayan, who let him write a theme for the TV series La rivière esperance, aired on the France 2 network in autumn 1995. He worked with Dayan again with other major productions such as Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, Balzac, and Les nuiteux.

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Bryan Adams
Bryan Adams, OC OBC (born Bryan Guy Adams, 5 November 1959) is a Canadian rock singer-songwriter, guitarist, bassist, producer, actor and photographer. For his contributions to music, Adams has many awards and nominations, including 20 Juno Awards among 56 nominations, 15 Grammy Award nominations including a win for Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television in 1992. He has also won MTV, ASCAP, and American Music awards. In addition, he has won two Ivor Novello Awards for song composition and has been nominated for several Golden Globe Awards and three times for Academy Awards for his songwriting for films.
Adams was awarded the Order of Canada and the Order of British Columbia for contributions to popular music and philanthropic work via his own foundation, which helps improve education for people around the world.
Adams was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with the 2,435th star in March 2011 and Canada's Walk of Fame in 1998, and in April 2006 he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame at Canada's Juno Awards. In 2008, Bryan was ranked 38 on the list of All-Time top artists by the Billboard Hot 100 50th Anniversary Charts. On 13 January 2010, he received the Allan Waters Humanitarian Award for his part in numerous charitable concerts and campaigns during his career, and on 1 May 2010 was given the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for his 30 years of contributions to the arts.

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Buddy DeSylva
George Gard "Buddy" DeSylva (January 27, 1895 – July 11, 1950) was an American songwriter, film producer and record executive. He wrote or co-wrote many popular songs and along with Johnny Mercer and Glenn Wallichs he founded Capitol Records.
DeSylva was born in New York City, but grew up in California and attended the University of Southern California. His father, Aloysius J. De Sylva, was better known to American audiences as the Portuguese-born actor, Hal De Forrest.
DeSylva's first successful songs were those used by Al Jolson on Broadway in the 1918 +Sinbad production, which included "I'll Say She Does". Soon thereafter he met Jolson and in 1918 the pair went to New York and DeSylva began working as a songwriter at Tin Pan Alley. In the early 1920s DeSylva frequently worked with composer George Gershwin. Together they created the experimental one-act jazz opera Blue Monday set in Harlem, which is widely regarded as a forerunner to Porgy and Bess ten years later.
In 1925, DeSylva became one third of the songwriting team with lyricist Lew Brown and composer Ray Henderson, one of the top Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the era. The writing and publishing partnership continued until 1930, producing a string of feel-good hits and the perennial Broadway favorite Good News. The popularity of this team was so great that Gershwin's mother supposedly chided her sons for not being able to write the sort of hits turned out by the trio. The 1956 Hollywood film The Best Things in Life Are Free, starring Gordon MacRae, depicting the De Sylva, Brown and Henderson collaboration.

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Buffy Sainte-Marie
Buffy Sainte-Marie, OC (born February 20, 1941) is a Canadian Cree singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. Throughout her career in all of these areas, her work has focused on issues of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her singing and writing repertoire includes subjects of love, war, religion, and mysticism. She recorded one country album, I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again, in Nashville, and her Academy Award-winning "Up Where We Belong" is considered "pure pop".
She founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project, an educational curriculum devoted to better understanding Native Americans. She has won recognition and many awards and honours for both her music and her work in education and social activism.
She was born Beverly Sainte-Marie in 1941 on the Piapot Cree Indian reserve in the Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada. She was orphaned and later adopted, growing up in Wakefield, Massachusetts with parents Albert and Winifred Sainte-Marie, who were related to her biological parents. She attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, earning degrees (BA 1963 and PhD 1983) in teaching and Oriental philosophy. and graduating in the top ten of her class.

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Burt Kalmar
Bert Kalmar (February 10, 1884 - September 18, 1947) was a Jewish American lyricist.
He was born in New York, New York. He ran away from home at the age of 10 to become a magician at a tent show^{[citation needed]}, and retained an interest in magic all his life. He never got much of an education, but decided to make a career in show business. He earned enough money as a vaudeville performer to start a music publishing company, Kalmar and Puck. He hired Harry Ruby as a song plugger, and as a result of a knee injury that stopped him from dancing professionally, turned to writing song lyrics full-time. Ruby, who had got a job at the firm of "'Waterson, Berlin and Snyder'," got Kalmar a job at the same firm writing song lyrics. Before World War I he had begun to write lyrics for a number of different composers. One of them, Ruby, who had also had a number of collaborators, saw a strong compatibility between the two, and by 1920 Kalmar and Ruby recognized that they should form a permanent songwriting team. Their partnership resulted in some of the most well-known songs featured in the Marx Brothers' Broadway production of Animal Crackers (1928) as well as the film of the same name. Kalmar and Ruby's songs were also featured in the Marx Brothers' films Horse Feathers (1932) and Duck Soup (1933).

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Burton Lane
Burton Lane (February 2, 1912 – January 5, 1997) was an American composer and lyricist. His most popular and successful works include Finian's Rainbow and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.
Lane was born Burton Levy in New York City and studied classical piano as a child. At age 14 the theatrical producers the Shuberts commissioned him to write songs for a revue, Greenwich Village Follies.
He was known for his Broadway musicals, Finian's Rainbow (1947) and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1965). He also wrote the music for the less remembered Broadway shows, Hold On to Your Hats (1940), Laffing Room Only (1944), and Carmelina (1979), the latter with lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, who had also written lyrics to Lane's music for On a Clear Day and the film Royal Wedding (1951). Lane mainly wrote music for films, such as Dancing Lady, Babes on Broadway, writing for more than 30 movies.
He was president of the American Guild of Authors and Composers from 1957 and for the next 10 terms, during which period he campaigned against music piracy. He also served three terms on the board of directors of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP).

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Carlinhos Brown
Carlinhos Brown (born Antonio Carlos Santos de Freitas, November 23, 1962) is an Oscar-nominated Brazilian musician, songwriter and record producer from Salvador, Bahia. His musical style blends Tropicália, reggae, and traditional Brazilian percussion. He has also been nominated for an Academy Award for his musical contributions in Rio.
He founded Timbalada and Tribalistas, and is also a solo artist.
He was born in Candeal Pequeno, a small neighbourhood in the Brotas area of Salvador de Bahia (Brazil) to parents Renato and Madalena. In 1967 he was still a child when Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil (two 25-year-old musicians from Bahia) started a movement that would radically change Brazilian and popular music: Tropicália.
Osvaldo Alves da Silva (known as the Master of the Bongo) introduced him to the tradition of Brazilian folklore and its percussion: tambourine, drums and reco-reco. He soon learned all the secrets of the percussion instruments and developed a personal style he has never abandoned.

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Carlos Santana
Carlos Augusto Alves Santana (born July 20, 1947) is a Mexican and American rock guitarist. Santana became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which pioneered rock, Latin music and jazz fusion. The band's sound featured his melodic, blues-based guitar lines set against Latin and African rhythms featuring percussion instruments such as timbales and congas not generally heard in rock music. Santana continued to work in these forms over the following decades. He experienced a resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990s. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine listed Santana at number 15 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. He has won 10 Grammy Awards and 3 Latin Grammy Awards.
Santana was born in Autlán de Navarro, Jalisco, Mexico. Carlos learned to play the violin at age five and the guitar at age eight. His younger brother, Jorge Santana, would also become a professional guitarist. Young Carlos was heavily influenced by Ritchie Valens at a time when there were very few Latinos in American rock and pop music. The family moved from Autlán de Navarro to Tijuana In La Colonia Libertad, the city on Mexico's border with California, and then San Francisco. Carlos stayed in Tijuana but joined his family in San Francisco later and graduated from James Lick Middle School and Mission High School there. He graduated from Mission High in 1965. Carlos was accepted into the California State University, Northridge and Humboldt State University, but turned down both of the offers. Javier Bátiz, a famous guitarist from Tijuana, was said to have been Carlos's guitar teacher who taught him to play a different style of guitar soloing. After learning Javier Batiz's techniques, Santana would make them his own as well.

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Charles Wolcott
Charles Wolcott (September 29, 1906 in Flint, United States – 1987 in Haifa, Israel) was a music composer who served as a member of the Universal House of Justice, the supreme governing body of the Bahá'í Faith, between 1963 and 1987.
Wolcott was born in Flint, Michigan, USA. He moved to Hollywood in 1937 and soon began working at Walt Disney Studios writing music for cartoon shorts, then feature films such as Pinocchio and Bambi. By 1944 he had become General Musical Director at Disney Studios. In 1950 he transferred to MGM Studios as Associate General Musical Director, and in 1958 became General Musical Director.
Wolcott had US hit singles in 1944: "Tico-Tico", and 1960: "Ruby Duby Du".
Sheila Banani poetry, U.S.A. from Arts Dialogue, March 1995, pages 24 - 26

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Charlie Gillingham
Charlie Gillingham (born Charles Thomas Gillingham, January 26, 1960, Torrance, California) is best known for his performance on the Hammond B-3 organ, accordion, piano, and keyboards for the band Counting Crows. He has also played the bass guitar in live shows during certain songs such as "Holiday in Spain".
Gillingham attended Richard Henry Dana Junior High and San Pedro High School, both in San Pedro, California, and also attended Miraleste High School in Rancho Palos Verdes his junior and senior year. He was a member of Zip Code Revue, and played keyboards on Train's 1998 debut album.
In 2004, Gillingham was nominated for an Oscar as co-composer of the song "Accidentally in Love". He was put forward in the category Academy Award for Best Original Song with his fellow songwriters Adam Duritz, Jim Bogios, David Immerglück, Matt Malley, David Bryson and Dan Vickrey. The track was used in the film Shrek 2.
Apart from his work with Counting Crows, Gillingham also contributed to the following recordings:

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Christophe Barratier
Christophe Barratier (born 17 June 1963), son of actress Eva Simonet and nephew of film director Jacques Perrin, is a French film producer, film director and screenwriter. He has directed three hugely successful features films The Chorus (2004). As the lyricist of the film's song Look To Your Path (Vois Sur Ton Chemin), he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film as well as eight César Awards, of which it won two. His second feature film Paris 36 starring Gérard Jugnot and Nora Arnezeder which was also nominated for Academy Award for Best Original Song and four César Awards. His latest film is a new adaptation of War of the Buttons that takes place during World War II, it was released in France during the summer of 2011 and cost €16 million.

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Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre. After a slow start, he began to achieve success in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage. Unlike most successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote both the lyrics and the music for his songs.
After a serious horseback riding accident in 1937, Porter was left disabled and in constant pain, but he continued to work. His shows of the early 1940s did not contain the lasting hits of his best work of the 1920s and 30s, but in 1948 he made a triumphant comeback with his most successful musical, Kiss Me, Kate.
Porter's other musicals include Fifty Million Frenchmen, DuBarry Was a Lady, Anything Goes and Can-Can, and his numerous hit songs include "Night and Day", "I Get a Kick out of You", "Well, Did You Evah!" and "I've Got You Under My Skin". He also composed scores for films from the 1930s to the 1950s. He was noted for his sophisticated, suggestive lyrics, clever rhymes and complex forms.

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Con Conrad
Con Conrad (June 18, 1891 – September 28, 1938) was an American songwriter and producer.
Con Conrad was born Conrad K. Dober in New York City. He published his first song, "Down in Dear Old New Orleans", in 1912. Conrad produced the Broadway show The Honeymoon Express, starring Al Jolson, in 1913. By 1918, Conrad was writing and publishing with Henry Waterson and had his first major hit in 1920 with the song Margie. Over the next several years, he would also be responsible for such standards as "Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me", "You’ve Got to See Your Mama Every Night", "Memory Lane", "Lonesome and Sorry", "Palesteena" and "Come on Spark Plug".
In 1923 Conrad focused on the stage and wrote the scores for the Broadway shows: The Greenwich Follies, Moonlight, Betty Lee, Kitty’s Kisses and Americana. In 1929 he moved to Hollywood after losing all of his money on unsuccessful shows. There he worked on films such as: Fox Movietone Follies, Palmy Days, The Gay Divorcee and Here’s to Romance.
Conrad received the first Academy Award for Best Song for The Continental in 1934 along with collaborator Herb Magidson. He died four years later in Van Nuys, California.

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Cynthia Weil
Cynthia Weil (born October 18, 1940, New York) is a prominent American songwriter. She is famous for having written many songs together with her husband Barry Mann.
Weil was trained as an actress and dancer but soon demonstrated a songwriting ability that led to her collaboration with Barry Mann whom she would marry in August, 1961. Weil became one of the Brill Building songwriters of the 1960s, and one of the most important writers during the emergence of rock and roll.
She and her husband went on to create songs for numerous contemporary artists, winning a number of Grammy Awards and Academy Award nominations for their compositions for film. As their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame biography put it, in part: "Mann and Weil ... [works went from] epic ballads (“On Broadway,” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’”) to outright rockers (“Kicks,” “We’ve Gotta Get Out of This Place”) [and they also] placed an emphasis on meaningful lyrics in their songwriting. With Weil writing the words and Mann the music, they came up with a number of songs that addressed such serious subjects as racial and economic divides[,] “Uptown,” ... and the difficult reality of making it in the big city (“On Broadway,” ...). “Only in America” ... tackled segregation and racism, making it rather too controversial for the Drifters, who were the intended artists. “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” ... became an anthem for [the] Vietnam soldier, antiwar protesters, and young people who viewed it as an anthem of greater opportunities."

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Dan Vickrey
Daniel Vickrey (born August 26, 1966) is an American musician. He has performed since 1994 as a lead guitarist in the alternative rock band, Counting Crows. Vickrey also provides backing vocals, and is a harmonist within the band.
As co-writer of a number of hit songs with Counting Crows, Vickrey has distinguished himself as a nominee for a Grammy Award, Golden Globe Award, an Oscar, and was a winner of an award from BMI for co-writing the song, "Accidentally in Love."
Vickrey learned to play the guitar when he was about 11 years old with his father. Because of this, he was first influenced by his father's musical preferences. From childhood, he had listened to vinyl records belonging to his father, older brother, and sister. Albums in these collections featured Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and his sister's Bee Gee's records. Vickrey's next-door neighbor introduced him to The Beatles, and Dan began spending time at a local guitar shop where he found a music teacher who gave Vickrey a taste of some of Eric Clapton's earliest work, performing with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, which left a lasting impression on him. He joined his first band with his neighbor, Steve Bowman, and his brother.

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David Foster
David Walter Foster, OC, OBC (born November 1, 1949), is a Canadian musician, record producer, composer, singer, songwriter, and arranger, noted for discovering singers such as Michael Bublé, Josh Groban, and Charice Pempengco; and for producing some of the most successful artists in the world, such as Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Céline Dion, Andrea Bocelli, Toni Braxton, Madonna, Air Supply and Michael Jackson. Foster has won 16 Grammy Awards from 47 nominations. David Foster is the current Chairman of Verve Music Group.
Throughout his career, he has produced recordings for a wide range of musical artists, including Bryan Adams, Tamia, Christina Aguilera, The Bee Gees, Andrea Bocelli, Boz Scaggs, Mariah Carey, Toni Braxton, Chicago, Destiny's Child, Neil Diamond, Céline Dion, Earth Wind and Fire, Gloria Estefan, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, Chaka Khan, Beyonce Knowles, Kenny Loggins, Madonna, Olivia Newton-John, Nsync, All-4-One, Plus One, Charice Pempengco, Prince, LeAnn Rimes, Kenny Rogers, Barbra Streisand, Donna Summer, Shania Twain, Hall & Oates, Tim Feehan, The Tubes, and Jackie Evancho.

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David Immerglück
David A. Immerglück (born May 3, 1961) is an American multi-instrumentalist who is best known as a guitarist in the alternative rock bands Counting Crows, Camper Van Beethoven and the Monks of Doom. A versatile musician, Immerglück plays mandolin, pedal steel guitar, electric sitar, and keyboards on a professional level, sings and harmonizes with backing vocals, and performs some songs as a slide guitarist.
David Immerglück's surname is Austrian, and roughly translates from German as "always lucky." His nickname is "Immy", often coupled with the slang phrase "gimme".^{[citation needed]}
Immerglück began playing music in the San Francisco Bay area. Like other aspiring young musicians, he played with various childhood friends, but began a lifetime habit of joining or "sitting in" with more than one band at a time, learning from the exposure to other differing musical influences and interests. He early began to experiment with different sounds and a growing interest in instruments beyond just the guitar. Performing in an esoteric rock band called Polymorph, Immerglück recorded his first (unreleased) singles with a band named Mod-L Society; "Back To Baltimore", and "Janie", in 1985. By 1986, he had moved on to a band called The Ophelias, and the same year, had spread his interests to joining other indie rock bands.

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David Shire
| name = David Shire | background = non_vocal_instrumentalist | birth_name = David Lee Shire | birth_date = July 3, 1937 (age 74) |birth_place =Buffalo, New York | occupation = Composer | instrument = Piano | genre = Film score
musicals
Television score | 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 1974 movie The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974 film) 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.
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. 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.

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David Zippel
David Joel Zippel (born May 17, 1954) is an American musical theatre lyricist.
Zippel was born in Easton, Pennsylvania. He is a 1976 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. While there, he wrote a "bizarre political musical" called Rotunda. He had intended on going to Harvard Law School to become a theatrical lawyer, but when he met Wally Harper (at the time Barbara Cook's accompanist and was in need of a lyricist, Zippel offered his services. Two of the songs they wrote together were used when Cook sang at Carnegie Hall. According to his official biography, "he is delighted not to practice law."^{[citation needed]}
He also wrote the theme song to Veronica's Closet.
His theatrical credits include:
Zippel contributed lyrics to The Swan Princess (music by Lex de Azevedo, the song Far Longer than Forever was nominated for a Golden Globe Award), as well as provided the singing voice of Jean-Bob the Frog, and more notably wrote the lyrics for the Disney films Hercules, with music by Alan Menken (the song "Go the Distance" received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song) and Mulan, with music by Matthew Wilder. The music and lyrics received an Academy Award nomination for Best Musical or Comedy Score. A year later, Zippel collaborated with Phil Collins for Tarzan. He was in his agent Richard Kraft's film Finding Kraftland.

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Dean Pitchford
Dean Pitchford (born July 29, 1951, Honolulu, Hawaii) is an American songwriter, screenwriter, director, actor, and novelist. His work has earned him an Oscar and a Golden Globe Award, as well as nominations for three additional Oscars, two more Golden Globes, seven Grammy Awards and two Tony Awards.
Pitchford was born in Honolulu, where he attended Star Of The Sea School and graduated (1968) from Saint Louis High School.
Pitchford began his performance career as an actor and singer with the Honolulu Community Theatre (now Diamond Head Theatre), the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra and the Honolulu Theatre for Youth, among others.
While studying at Yale University, Pitchford performed with numerous campus drama groups, but his focus gradually turned off-campus, where he worked with the Wooster Square Revival, an experimental theatre company that offered acting opportunities to recovering addicts and alcoholics. In 1969, Pitchford returned to Honolulu as a writers’ assistant to authors Faye Hammel and Sylvan Levey, updating the popular guidebook Hawai’i on $5 and $10 A Day, and researching TWA’s Budget Guide to Hawai’i, the first of a series of guidebooks that would eventually metamorphose into the popular series TWA Getaway Guides.

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Dick Haymes
Richard Benjamin "Dick" Haymes (September 13, 1918 – March 28, 1980) was an actor and singer. He was one of the most popular male vocalists of the 1940s and early 1950s. He was the older brother of Bob Haymes, who was an actor, television host, and songwriter.
Haymes was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1918. His mother, whom Haymes predeceased, was Irish-born Marguerite Haymes (1894–1987), a well-known vocal coach and instructor. Dick Haymes became a vocalist in a number of big bands, worked in Hollywood, on radio, and in films throughout the 1940s/1950s.

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Dido (singer)
Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong (

/ˈdaɪdoʊ/; born 25 December 1971), known as Dido, is an English singer-songwriter.
Dido shot to worldwide success with her debut album, No Angel (1999). The album sold in excess of 21 million copies worldwide, and won several awards; including the MTV Europe Music Award for Best New Act, two NRJ Awards for Best New Act and Best Album, and two Brit Awards for Best British Female and Best Album. Her following album, Life for Rent (2003), continued her mainstream success with the help of popular singles "White Flag" and "Life for Rent". The album went on to sell around 12 million copies worldwide and saw her receive more accolades; including the Ivor Novello Award for Songwriter of the Year for "White Flag", two further Brit and NRJ Awards, as well as a Grammy Award nomination.
Dido's first two albums, No Angel and Life for Rent, are among the best-selling albums in UK Chart history, and both are in the top 10 best-selling albums of the 2000s in the UK. Her third and latest studio album, Safe Trip Home (2008), received critical praise to help maintain her success. She was nominated for an Academy Award for the song "If I Rise". Dido has been ranked #98 of Billboard 200 Artists Music Chart based on the success of her music in the first decade of the 21st century.

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Dimitri Tiomkin
Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin (May 10, 1894 – November 11, 1979) was a Russian-born Hollywood film score composer and conductor. He is considered "one of the giants of Hollywood movie music." Musically trained in Russia, he is best known for his westerns, "where his expansive, muscular style had its greatest impact." Tiomkin received 22 Academy Award nominations and won four Oscars.
Dimitri Tiomkin (Ukrainian: Дмитро Зиновійович Тьомкін, Dmytro Zynoviyovych Tiomkin, Russian: Дмитрий Зиновьевич Тёмкин, Dmitrij Zinov'evič Tjomkin, sometimes transliterated as Dmitri Tiomkin) was born in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire.
His family was of Jewish descent, with his father a "distinguished pathologist" and associate of Professor Paul Ehrlich, the inventor and Nobel laureate noted for discovering a cure for syphilis and for his research in autoimmunity, later becoming chemotherapy. His mother was a musician who began teaching the young Tiomkin piano at an early age. Her hope was to have her son become a professional pianist, according to Tiomkin biographer, Christopher Palmer. Tiomkin described his mother as being "small, blonde, merry and vivacious."

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Dinah Shore
Dinah Shore (born Frances Rose Shore; February 29, 1916 – February 24, 1994) was an American singer, actress, and television personality. She reached the height of her popularity as a recording artist during the Big Band era of the 1940s and 1950s, but achieved even greater success a decade later, in television, mainly as hostess of a series of variety programs for Chevrolet.
After failing singing auditions for the bands of Benny Goodman and both Jimmy Dorsey and his brother Tommy Dorsey, Shore struck out on her own to become the first singer of her era to achieve huge solo success. She had a string of 80 charted popular hits, lasting from 1940 into the late '50s, and after appearing in a handful of films went on to a four-decade career in American television, starring in her own music and variety shows in the '50s and '60s and hosting two talk shows in the '70s. TV Guide magazine ranked her at #16 on their list of the top fifty television stars of all time. Stylistically, Dinah Shore was compared to two singers who followed her in the mid-to-late '40s and early '50s, Doris Day and Patti Page.

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DJ Paul
Paul Beauregard, better known by his stage name DJ Paul, is an American rapper and record producer from Memphis, Tennessee. He is one half of the Memphis-based rap group Three 6 Mafia. He is also the half-brother of former Three 6 Mafia member Lord Infamous. He won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "It's Hard out Here for a Pimp". DJ Paul founded Scale-A-Ton Entertainment in 2009.
DJ Paul (Paul Beauregard) began his career as a DJ, producer, and rapper in the early 90's. He was one-half of the duo The Serial Killaz, his older half-brother Lord Infamous (Ricky Dunigan) was the other half. They released self-recorded tapes in their neighborhood, school, and local shops. "Portrait Of A Serial Killa" was their first tape, released in 1992. Also DJ Paul released numerous solo mixtapes (ex: c "Volume 12 (Pts. 1 and 2)", "Volume 15: For You Niggaz Wit' Anna", and "Volume 16: 4 Da Summa of '94").
DJ Paul rose to prominence as one of the best DJ-producers on the south side of Memphis, and met up with DJ/artist/producer Juicy J (Jordan Houston), also garnering buzz on the North side of Memphis. They noticed they had a lot of similar interests eventually merging their sound and crew members to form the super-group The Backyard Posse (later known as Triple Six Mafia). DJ Paul and Juicy J soon began producing dark, eerie tracks driven by bass-heavy beats and haunting sounds, and invited numerous Backyard Posse members to rap over the beats with them. They released the resulting tracks locally as Triple Six Mafia; years later these recordings would resurface as re-releases.

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Dolly Parton
Dolly Rebecca Parton (born January 19, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter, author, multi-instrumentalist, actress and philanthropist, best known for her work in country music. As a songwriter, she has composed over 3,000 songs, the best known of which include "I Will Always Love You" (a two-time U.S. country chart-topper for Parton, as well an international pop hit for Whitney Houston), "Jolene", "Coat of Many Colors", "9 to 5" and "My Tennessee Mountain Home". As an actress, she starred in the movies 9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Steel Magnolias, Straight Talk, Unlikely Angel and Joyful Noise. She is one of the most successful female country artists of all time; with an estimated 100 million in album sales, Dolly Parton is also one of the best selling artists of all time. She is known as "The Queen of Country Music".
She was born in Sevierville, Tennessee, the fourth of twelve children of Avie Lee Parton (née Owens; October 5, 1923 – December 5, 2003) and Robert Lee Parton (March 22, 1921 – November 12, 2000), a tobacco farmer. Her siblings are: Willadeene Parton (born March 24, 1940), David Wilburn Parton (born March 30, 1942), Coy Denver "Denver" Parton (born August 16, 1943), Bobby Lee Parton (born February 18, 1948), Stella Mae Parton (born May 4, 1949), Cassie Nan Parton (February 12, 1951), Randel Huston "Randy" Parton (born December 15, 1953), Larry Gerald Parton (born and died July 6, 1955), Floyd and Frieda Estelle Parton (born June 1, 1957), and Rachel Ann Parton (born August 31, 1959). Her family was, as she has described them, "dirt poor". She outlined her family's lack of money in a number of her early songs, notably "Coat of Many Colors" and "In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)". They lived in a rustic, dilapidated one-room cabin in Locust Ridge, Tennessee, a hamlet just north of the Greenbrier Valley, in the Locust Ridge area of the Great Smoky Mountains in Sevier County, a predominantly Pentecostal area.

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Don Black (lyricist)
Don Black, OBE (born 21 June 1938) is an English lyricist. His works have included numerous musicals, movie themes and hit songs. He has provided lyrics for John Barry, Charles Strouse, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Quincy Jones, Jule Styne, Henry Mancini, Michael Jackson, Elmer Bernstein, Michel Legrand, Hayley Westenra, A. R. Rahman, Marvin Hamlisch and Debbie Wiseman.
Black was born Gerald Blackstone in London, England, the youngest of five children of Russian Jewish immigrants Morris and Betsy (née Kersh) Blackstone. During his childhood the family lived in a flat in Tornay House, Shore Place, South Hackney.
He began his music industry career as an office boy with a music publishing firm, and later worked as a song-plugger. He also had a brief spell as a comic.
He was personal manager to the singer Matt Monro for many years and also provided songs for him (usually writing English language lyrics to continental songs). These included "Walk Away" (music: Udo Jürgens) and "For Mamma" (music: Charles Aznavour).

wn.com/Don_Black_(lyricist)

Don Raye
Don Raye (March 16, 1909 - January 29, 1985), born Donald MacRae Wilhoite, Jr., in Washington, D.C., was an American vaudevillian and songwriter, best known for his songs for the Andrews Sisters such as "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar", "The House of Blue Lights", "Just For A Thrill" and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy."
While known for such wordy novelty numbers, he also wrote the lyrics to "You Don't Know What Love Is," a simple, poetic lament of unusual power. He also composed the song "(That Place) Down the Road a Piece," one of his boogie woogie songs, which has a medium bright boogie tempo. It was written for the Will Bradley Orchestra, who recorded it in 1940, but the song was destined to become a rock and roll standard, recorded by The Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Foghat, Amos Milburn, Harry Gibson, and countless others. In 1940 he wrote the lyrics for the patriotic song "This Is My Country".
His great success with "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar" (written with Big Band drummer Ray McKinley) led Raye to write the follow-up songs, "Scrub Me Mamma, with a Boogie Beat," "Bounce Me Brother, with a Solid Four," and "Fry Me Cookie, with a Can of Lard."

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Dorothy Fields
Dorothy Fields (July 15, 1905 – March 28, 1974) was an American librettist and lyricist.
She wrote over 400 songs for Broadway musicals and films. Along with Ann Ronell, Dana Suesse, Bernice Petkere, and Kay Swift, she was one of the first successful Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood female songwriters.
Fields was born in Allenhurst, New Jersey, and grew up in New York City.
Her father, Lew Fields, an immigrant from Poland, was a vaudeville comedian and later became a Broadway producer. Her career as a professional songwriter took off in 1928, when Jimmy McHugh, who had seen some of her early work, invited her to provide some lyrics for him for Blackbirds of 1928. Fields and McHugh teamed up until 1935. Songs from this period include "I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby", "Exactly Like You", and "On the Sunny Side of the Street."
In the mid-1930s, Fields started to write lyrics for films and collaborated with other composers, including Jerome Kern. With Kern, she worked on the movie version of Roberta, and also on their greatest success, Swing Time. The song "The Way You Look Tonight" earned the Fields/Kern team an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1936.

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Dory Previn
Dory Previn, born Dorothy Veronica Langan (October 22, 1925 – February 14, 2012), was an American lyricist, singer-songwriter and poet.
During the late 1950s and 1960s she was a lyricist on songs intended for motion pictures and, with her then husband, André Previn, received several Academy Award nominations. In the 1970s, after their divorce, she released six albums of original songs and an acclaimed live album. Previn's lyrics from this period are characterized by their originality, irony and honesty in dealing with her troubled personal life as well as more generally about relationships, sexuality, religion and psychology. She continued to work until her death as a writer of song lyrics and prose.
Previn was born in Rahway, New Jersey, the eldest daughter in a strict Catholic family of Irish origin. She had a troubled relationship with her father, especially during childhood. He had served in the First World War and been gassed, and experienced periods of depression and violent mood swings. He tended to alternately embrace and reject her, but supported her when she began to show talents for singing and dancing. However, his mental health deteriorated after the birth of a second daughter, culminating in a paranoid episode in which he boarded the family up in their home and held them at gunpoint for several months. Previn's childhood experiences, described in her autobiography Midnight Baby, had a profound effect on her later life and work.

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Edward Eliscu
Edward Eliscu (April 2, 1902 – June 18, 1998) was a lyricist, playwright, producer and actor.
Eliscu was born in New York City. He attended the City College of New York where he attained a Bachelor of Science degree. He then began acting in Broadway plays. Eliscu's first film score was with Vincent Youmans and Billy Rose for the film Great Day.
He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1975. He died, aged 96, in Newtown, Connecticut.

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Edward Heyman
Edward Heyman (March 14, 1907 – October 16, 1981) was an American musician and lyricist, best known for his compositions "Body and Soul", "When I Fall in Love", and "For Sentimental Reasons". He also contributed many songs for films.
Heyman studied at the University of Michigan where he had an early start on his career writing college musicals. After graduating from college Heyman moved back to New York City where he started working with a number of experienced musicians like Victor Young ("When I Fall in Love"), Dana Suesse ("You Ought to Be in Pictures") and Johnny Green ("Body and Soul", "Out of Nowhere", "I Cover the Waterfront", and "Easy Come, Easy Go").
From 1939 to 1954, Heyman contributed songs to film scores including That Girl From Paris, Curly Top, Kissing Bandit, Delightfully Dangerous and Northwest Outpost.
Arguably Heyman's biggest hit is his composition "Body and Soul", written in 1930, often recorded (in 1939 by Coleman Hawkins and since by many others), which frequently crops up in films, most recently in 2002's Catch Me If You Can. Heyman also wrote "Through the Years", "For Sentimental Reasons", "Blame It on My Youth" (with Oscar Levant), "Love Letters", "Blue Star" (theme of the television Series Medic), "The Wonder of You", "Boo-Hoo", "Bluebird of Happiness", and "You're Mine, You".

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Elliot Goldenthal
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.
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.^{[citation needed]} 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.^{[not in citation given]}

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Elliott Smith
Steven Paul "Elliott" Smith (August 6, 1969 – October 21, 2003) was an American singer-songwriter and musician. Smith was born in Omaha, Nebraska, raised primarily in Texas, and resided for a significant portion of his life in Portland, Oregon, where he first gained popularity. His primary instrument was the guitar, but he was also proficient at piano, clarinet, bass guitar, drums, and harmonica. Smith had a distinctive vocal style characterized by his "whispery, spiderweb-thin delivery" and use of multi-tracking to create vocal layers, textures, and harmonies.
After playing in the rock band Heatmiser for several years, Smith began his solo career in 1994 with releases on the independent record labels Cavity Search and Kill Rock Stars. In 1997 he signed a contract with DreamWorks Records, for which he recorded two albums. Smith rose to mainstream prominence when his song "Miss Misery"—included in the soundtrack for the film Good Will Hunting—was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Original Song category in 1998.

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Elmer Bernstein
Elmer Bernstein (April 4, 1922 – August 18, 2004) was an American composer and conductor best known for his many film scores. In a career which spanned fifty years, he composed music for hundreds of film and television productions. His most popular works include the scores to The Magnificent Seven, The Ten Commandments, The Great Escape, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Ghostbusters.
Bernstein won an Oscar for his score to Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and was nominated for fourteen Oscars in total. He also won two Golden Globes and was nominated for two Grammy Awards.
Bernstein was born in New York City, the son of Selma (née Feinstein) and Edward Bernstein. He was not related to the celebrated composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, but the two men were friends, and even shared a certain physical similarity. Within the world of professional music, they were distinguished from each other by the use of the nicknames Bernstein West (Elmer) and Bernstein East (Leonard).
During his childhood, Bernstein performed professionally as a dancer and an actor, in the latter case playing the part of Caliban in The Tempest on Broadway, and he also won several prizes for his painting. He gravitated toward music at the age of twelve, at which time he was given a scholarship in piano by Henriette Michelson, a Juilliard teacher who guided him throughout his entire career as a pianist. She took him to play some of his improvisations for composer Aaron Copland, who was encouraging and selected Israel Citkowitz as a teacher for the young boy. Bernstein's music has some stylistic similarities to Copland's music, most notably in his western scores, particularly sections of Big Jake, in the Gregory Peck film Amazing Grace and Chuck, and in his spirited score for the 1958 film adaptation of Erskine Caldwell's novel God's Little Acre.

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Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on 25 March 1947) is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor. He has worked with lyricist Bernie Taupin as his songwriter partner since 1967; they have collaborated on more than 30 albums to date.
In his four-decade career John has sold more than 250 million records, making him one of the most successful artists of all time. His single "Candle in the Wind 1997" has sold over 33 million copies worldwide, and is the best selling single in Billboard history. He has more than 50 Top 40 hits, including seven consecutive No. 1 US albums, 56 Top 40 singles, 16 Top 10, four No. 2 hits, and nine No. 1 hits. He has won six Grammy Awards, four Brit Awards, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Tony Award. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him Number 49 on its list of the 100 greatest artists of all time.
John was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. Having been named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1996, John received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for "services to music and charitable services" in 1998.

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Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello (born Declan Patrick MacManus, 25 August 1954) is an English singer-songwriter. He came to prominence as an early participant in London's pub rock scene in the mid-1970s and later became associated with the punk/New Wave genre. Steeped in word play, the vocabulary of Costello's lyrics is broader than that of most popular songs. His music has drawn on many diverse genres; one critic described him as a "pop encyclopaedia", able to "reinvent the past in his own image".
Costello has won multiple awards in his career, including a Grammy Award, and has twice been nominated for the Brit Award for Best British Male. In 2003, Elvis Costello & the Attractions were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Costello number 80 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
Costello was born Declan Patrick MacManus in St Mary's Hospital, London, the son of Lilian Alda (née Ablett, b. 1927, Liverpool) and Ross MacManus (1927–2011), a musician and bandleader. He is of Irish heritage. Costello lived in Twickenham, attending Hounslow Secondary Modern School, which is now St Mark's Catholic Secondary School, in neighbouring Hounslow. With a musically inclined father (who was a jazz trumpeter and sang with The Joe Loss Orchestra), Costello's first broadcast recording was alongside his dad in a television commercial for R. White's Lemonade (I'm a Secret Lemonade Drinker). His father wrote and sang the song; Costello provided backing vocals. The advertisement won a silver award at the 1974 International Advertising Festival.

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Eminem
Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972), better known by his stage name Eminem (often stylized as EMINƎM) and by his alter ego Slim Shady, is an American rapper, record producer, songwriter and actor. Eminem's popularity brought his group, D12, to mainstream recognition. As well as being a member of D12, Eminem is also one half of the hip hop duo Bad Meets Evil, with Royce da 5'9". Eminem is one of the best-selling artists in the world and is the best selling artist of the 2000s. He has been listed and ranked as one of the greatest artists of all time by many magazines including the Rolling Stone magazine which has ranked him 82nd on its list of The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. The same magazine has declared him The King of Hip Hop. Including his work with D12 and Bad Meets Evil, Eminem has achieved ten number-one albums on the Billboard 200. He has sold more than 42 million tracks and 41 million albums in the United States, and nearly 90 million albums worldwide.
Eminem quickly gained popularity in 1999 with his major-label debut album, The Slim Shady LP. That first album, The Marshall Mathers LP and his third major album, The Eminem Show, all won Grammy Awards, making Eminem the first artist to win Best Rap Album for three consecutive LPs. The Marshall Mathers LP is also considered one of Eminem's best and most successful albums. Eminem then went on hiatus after touring in 2005. He released his first album since 2004's Encore, titled Relapse, on May 15, 2009. In 2010, Eminem released his seventh studio album Recovery, which was an international success. Recovery was also named the best selling album worldwide of 2010 joining The Eminem Show, which was the best seller of 2002. Eminem won Grammy Awards for both Relapse and Recovery, giving him a total of 13 Grammys in his career. Eminem has named Masta Ace, Big Daddy Kane, Newcleus, the Beastie Boys, Dr. Dre, Tupac Shakur, AZ, Nas, and Ice-T amongst others as his influences.

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Enya
Enya (born Eithne Ní Bhraonáin, Irish pronunciation: [ˈɛnʲə nʲiː ˈvˠɾˠiːn̪ˠaːnʲ], anglicized as Enya Brennan, 17 May 1961) is an Irish singer, instrumentalist and songwriter.
She began her musical career in 1980, when she briefly joined her family band Clannad before leaving to perform solo. She gained wider recognition for her music in the 1986 BBC series The Celts. Shortly afterwards, her 1988 album Watermark propelled her to further international fame and she became known for her distinctive sound, characterised by voice-layering, folk melodies, synthesised backdrops and ethereal reverberations. She has performed in 10 languages.
She continued to enjoy steady success during the 1990s and 2000s; her 2000 album A Day Without Rain sold 15 million copies, and became the top selling new age album of the 2000s in the US, according to Nielsen SoundScan. She was named the world's best selling female artist of 2001. She is Ireland's best-selling solo musician and is officially the country's second-largest musical export after the band U2. Her album sales were more than 75 million worldwide, with over 26 million in album sales in the US. Her work has earned her four Grammy Awards and an Academy Award nomination.

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Ernesto Lecuona
Ernesto Lecuona y Casado (August 6, 1895 - November 29, 1963) was a Cuban composer and pianist of Canarian father and Cuban mother, and worldwide fame. He composed over six hundred pieces, mostly in the Cuban vein, and was a pianist of exceptional quality.
Lecuona was born in Guanabacoa, Havana, Cuba. He started studying piano at an early age, under his sister Ernestina Lecuona, a famed composer in her own right. He later studied at the Peyrellade Conservatoire under Antonio Saavedra and the famous Joaquin Nin. Lecuona graduated from the National Conservatory of Havana with a Gold Medal for interpretation when he was sixteen. And he performed outside of Cuba at the Aeolian Hall (New York) in 1916.
He first travelled to Spain in 1924 on a concert tour with violinist Marta de la Torre; his successful piano recitals in 1928 at Paris coincided with a rise in interest in Cuban music.
He was a prolific composer of songs and music for stage and film. His works consisted of zarzuela, Afro-Cuban and Cuban rhythms, suites and many songs which are still very famous. They include Siboney (Canto Siboney), Malagueña and The Breeze And I (Andalucía). In 1942, his great hit, Always in my heart (Siempre en mi Corazon) was nominated for an Oscar for Best Song; however, it lost to White Christmas. Lecuona was a master of the symphonic form and conducted the Ernesto Lecuona Symphonic Orchestra, employing soloists including Cuban pianist and composer Carmelina Delfin. The Orchestra performed in the Cuban Liberation Day Concert at Carnegie Hall on October 10, 1943. The concert included the world premiere of Lecuona's Black Rhapsody. Lecuona gave help and the use of his name to the popular touring group, the Lecuona Cuban Boys, though he did not play as a member of the band. He did sometimes play piano solos as the first item on the bill.

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Euel Box
Euel Box (born December 31, 1928) is a music producer, composer, arranger, and trumpeter who has written major film scores and radio jingles for major markets.
He was born in Georgetown, Texas.
Box studied composition at the University of North Texas College of Music in the 1950s and earned a Bachelor of Music Degree in 1952. One of his composition teachers was Violet Archer, resident composer. He was classmates with undergraduate student composer Larry Austin, Eloy Fominaya and graduate students Robert Gauldin and Clifford Shipp.
Benji earned Box and his wife a 1975 nomination for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe award for best song.

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Fran Walsh
Frances "Fran" Walsh, Lady Jackson, MNZM (born January 10, 1959) is a screenwriter, film producer and occasional musician. She is the wife of filmmaker Peter Jackson. They have two children: Billy and Katie.
Fran Walsh has contributed to all of Jackson's films apart from his first feature Bad Taste. She won three Academy Awards in 2003, for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Picture, and Best Original Song, all for the movie The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. She has received a total of eight Oscar nominations.
Walsh was born into a family of Irish descent in Wellington, New Zealand, and attended Wellington Girls' College intent on becoming a fashion designer, but eventually became interested in music instead. Occasionally taking time off to perform in a punk band named The Wallsockets, she attended Victoria University of Wellington majoring in English literature and graduated in 1981. Walsh got her screen break writing material for Kiwi producer Grahame McLean on 1983 television film A Woman of Good Character/It's Lizzie to those Close. Later she wrote scripts for his TV show Worzel Gummidge Down Under.

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Frank Churchill
Frank Churchill (October 20, 1901 – May 14, 1942) was an American composer of popular music for films. He wrote most of the music for Disney's 1937 movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, including "Whistle While You Work" and "Some Day My Prince Will Come". The latter became a jazz standard covered by various jazz greats including Oscar Peterson, Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck.
Churchill began his career playing piano in cinemas at the age of 15. After dropping out of medical studies at UCLA to pursue a career in music, he became an accompanist at the Los Angeles radio station KNX (AM) in 1924.
He joined Disney studios in 1930, and scored many animated shorts - his song for The Three Little Pigs, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf", was a huge commercial success.
In 1937, he was chosen to score Disney's first full-length animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. His catchy, artfully written songs played a large part in the film's initial success and continuing popularity.
He became supervisor of music at Disney. In 1942, Churchill and fellow composer Oliver Wallace won an Oscar in the category "Scoring of a Musical Picture" for cowriting the score for Dumbo. He also shared an Oscar nomination with Ned Washington for the song "Baby Mine" from Dumbo for Best Song. A year later, Churchill received two posthumous Oscar nominations; the first for cowriting the score to Bambi with Edward Plumb, and the second for cowriting the song "Love is a Song" from Bambi with lyricist Larry Morey (1905–1971).

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Frank De Vol
Frank Denny De Vol (September 20, 1911 – October 27, 1999), also known simply as De Vol, was an American arranger, composer and actor.
De Vol was born in Moundsville, West Virginia and grew up in Canton, Ohio. His father, Herman Frank De Vol, was band-leader of a local movie orchestra and his mother, Minnie Emma Humphreys De Vol, had worked in a sewing shop. He attended Miami University.
When De Vol was 14, he became a member of the Musicians' Union. After playing violin in his father's orchestra and appearances in a Chinese restaurant, he joined the Horace Heidt Orchestra in the 1930s, being responsible for the arrangements. Later, he toured with the Alvino Rey Orchestra, before embarking on his recording career.
From the 1940s, De Vol wrote arrangements for the studio recordings of many top singers, including Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Tony Bennett, Dinah Shore, Doris Day and Vic Damone. His single most famous arrangement is probably the haunting string and piano accompaniment to Cole's "Nature Boy", which was a US Number One in 1948. That same year, he released a version of "The Teddy Bears' Picnic" (Capitol Records 15420), that he arranged and sang lead vocals on.

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Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra,

/sɨˈnɑːtrə/, (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and film actor.
Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the "bobby soxers", he released his first album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra in 1946. His professional career had stalled by the 1950s, but it was reborn in 1953 after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in From Here to Eternity.
He signed with Capitol Records in 1953 and released several critically lauded albums (such as In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin' Lovers, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice 'n' Easy). Sinatra left Capitol to found his own record label, Reprise Records in 1961 (finding success with albums such as Ring-a-Ding-Ding!, Sinatra at the Sands and Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim), toured internationally, was a founding member of the Rat Pack and fraternized with celebrities and statesmen, including John F. Kennedy. Sinatra turned 50 in 1965, recorded the retrospective September of My Years, starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, and scored hits with "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way".

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Franke Previte
Franke Jon Previte is a composer who grew up in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
He was with the New Jersey rock quintet Franke and the Knockouts as the singer and songwriter. Previously he had sung with the Oxford Watch Band and the heavy metal band Bull Angus. Franke and the Knockouts were signed by Millennium Records in 1981 and had three U.S. Top 40 singles and two Top 50 albums. Franke and the Knockouts' biggest single, "Sweetheart" was written by Previte and Knockout guitarist Billy Elworthy and became a Top 10 hit in 1981. The group's other two Top 40 hits were "You're My Girl" and "Without You (Not Another Lonely Night)". The band switched to Music Corporation of America in 1984, but they split up around 1986. Franke Previte co-wrote music for the hit soundtrack to the 1987 movie Dirty Dancing. He has a sister who is a Ph.D. scientist in the pharmaceutical industry.

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Frankie Sullivan
Frankie Sullivan (born Frank M. Sullivan III, 1 February 1955, Chicago) is an American guitarist and songwriter. He is best known for being a founding member of the band Survivor, and has been the only constant member of the band since its formation in 1977.
Along with former bandmate, keyboardist/vocalist Jim Peterik, Sullivan co-wrote many of the group's hits including "Eye of the Tiger" and "Burning Heart" from the Rocky III and IV movie soundtracks.
Sullivan began playing guitar in his very early teens by sitting in on local garage band practices and helping with their equipment changes. Eventually he was allowed to play a little after band practice when members realized his serious interest, as stated by local piano/keyboard musician and Northlake, IL resident Jimmy Tranchitelli.

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Frayser Boy
Frayser Boy (born Cedric Coleman) is an Academy Award-winning, rapper from Memphis, Tennessee. He was formerly signed to Hypnotize Minds, the label run by Three 6 Mafia members DJ Paul and Juicy J. He had released 3 albums under the Hypnotize label: Gone on That Bay (2003), Me Being Me (2005), and Da Key (2008). He will appear on Lil Wyte's album Still Doubted on the track "Gun Down".
At the 78th Academy Awards, he won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "It's Hard out Here for a Pimp" along with Three 6 Mafia members DJ Paul and Juicy J.

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Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire (born Frederick Austerlitz; May 10, 1899 – June 22, 1987) was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute. He is particularly associated with Ginger Rogers, with whom he made ten films.
Gene Kelly, another major innovator in filmed dance, said that "the history of dance on film begins with Astaire". Beyond film and television, many classical dancers and choreographers, Rudolf Nureyev, Sammy Davis, Jr., Michael Jackson, Gregory Hines, Mikhail Baryshnikov, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins among them, also acknowledged his importance and influence.
Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Johanna "Ann" (née Geilus) and Frederic "Fritz" Austerlitz (born September 8, 1868, as Friedrich Emanuel Austerlitz). Astaire's mother was born in the United States to Lutheran German immigrants from East Prussia and Alsace, while Astaire's father was born in Linz, Austria, to Jewish parents who had converted to Catholicism.

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Fred Ebb
Fred Ebb (April 8, 1928 – September 11, 2004) was an American musical theatre lyricist who had many successful collaborations with composer John Kander. The Kander and Ebb team frequently wrote for such performers as Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera.
Ebb was born in Manhattan to a Jewish family, the son of Anna Evelyn (née Gritz) and Harry Ebb. He worked during the early 1950s bronzing baby shoes, as a trucker's assistant, and was also employed in a department store credit office and at a hosiery company. He graduated from New York University with a bachelor’s degree in English Literature, and also earned his Master’s Degree in English from Columbia University.
One of his early collaborators was Phil Springer, and a song they wrote together ("I Never Loved Him Anyhow") was recorded by Carmen McRae in 1956. Another song Ebb wrote with Springer was "Heartbroken" (1953), which was recorded by Judy Garland, the mother of his future protégée, Liza Minnelli. Other Springer-Ebb tunes include "Moonlight Gambler" and "Nevertheless I Never Lost the Blues". "Don't Forget", which he wrote with Norman Leyden, was recorded by singer Eddy Arnold in 1954.

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Fred Karlin
Frederick James "Fred" Karlin (June 16, 1936 - March 26, 2004) was an American composer of more than one hundred scores for feature films and television movies. He also was an accomplished trumpeter adept at playing jazz, blues, classical, rock, and medieval music.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, he studied jazz composition with William Russo and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Amherst College, where he wrote his String Quartet No. 2 as his honors thesis. Following graduation, he moved to New York City, composing and arranging for various bands, including those of Benny Goodman, Harry James, and Chubby Jackson. During this period he also composed and arranged for documentaries, the Radio City Music Hall orchestra, and television commercials.
In 1962, Karlin scored a record album for Columbia of extracts from the comic strip Peanuts, performed by actress Kaye Ballard as Lucy and songwriter Arthur Siegel as Charlie Brown. The innovative score was performed by Karlin entirely on childrens' musical instruments and toys.

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Fred Rose (musician)
Fred Rose (August 24, 1898 - December 1, 1954) was an American Hall of Fame songwriter and music publishing executive.
Born in Evansville, Indiana, Fred Rose started playing piano and singing as a small boy. In his teens, he moved to Chicago, Illinois where he worked in bars busking for tips, and finally vaudeville. Eventually, he became successful as a songwriter, penning his first hit for entertainer Sophie Tucker.
For a short time Fred Rose lived in Nashville, Tennessee but his radio show there did not last long and he headed to New York City's Tin Pan Alley in hopes of making a living as a songwriter. It was there that he began writing songs with Ray Whitley, an RKO B-Western film star and author of "Back In the Saddle Again", and this collaboration introduced Rose to the possibilities of country music. He lived for a time with Ray and Kay Whitley in an apartment in Hollywood, co-writing many tunes for Ray's movies.
In 1942 he returned to Nashville, teaming up with Grand Ole Opry star Roy Acuff to create the first Nashville-based music publishing company. Their Acuff-Rose Music was almost immediately successful, particularly with the enormous hits of client Hank Williams. Acuff-Rose Music remained a foundation of the country music business even after Fred's death; his son, Wesley Rose, took over the presidency and continued with Roy Acuff until 1985, when the company's catalog was sold to Gaylord Entertainment Company, parent company of the Grand Ole Opry.

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Frederick Hollander
Friedrich Hollaender (born Friedrich Holländer; 18 October 1896 – 18 January 1976) was a German film composer and author.
He was born in London, where his father, operetta composer Victor Hollaender, worked at the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Young Friedrich had a solid music and theatre family background: his uncle Gustav was director of the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, his uncle Felix Hollaender was a well-known novelist and drama critic, who later worked with Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater.
In 1899 Friedrich's family returned to Germany, his father began teaching at the Stern Conservatory, where his son became a student in Engelbert Humperdinck's master class. In the evening he played the piano at silent film performances in local cinemas, developing the art of musical improvisation. By the age of 18 he was employed as a répétiteur at the New German Theatre in Prague and also was put in charge of troop entertainment at the Western Front of World War I.
Having finished his studies, he composed music for productions by Max Reinhardt and became involved in cabaret and wrote music for the film, The Blue Angel (1930). He left Nazi Germany (because he was Jewish) and emigrated to the United States of America where he wrote the music for over a hundred films, including Destry Rides Again (1939), A Foreign Affair (1948), The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953 Academy Award nomination) and Sabrina (1954). He also wrote as "Frederick Hollander", the semi-autobiographical novel Those Torn From Earth which was released in 1941. Many of his songs were made famous by Marlene Dietrich. He can be seen as the piano accompanist in A Foreign Affair (where he speaks a few words of dialog). He received four Academy Award nominations for composition. In 1956 he returned to Germany. He was married to Blandine Ebinger and died in Munich in 1976 and is buried in Waldfriedhof Dahlem.

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Frederick Loewe
Frederick Loewe (/ˈloʊ/, originally German Friedrich (Fritz) Löwe [ˈløːvə]; June 10, 1901 – February 14, 1988), was an Austrian-American composer. He collaborated with lyricist Alan Jay Lerner on the long running Broadway musicals My Fair Lady and Camelot, with book and lyrics by Lerner, both of which were made into films.
Loewe was born in Berlin, Germany, to Viennese parents Edmond and Rosa Loewe. His father was a noted Jewish operetta star who performed throughout Europe and in North and South America; he starred as Count Danilo in the original production of The Merry Widow.
Frederick Loewe grew up in Berlin and attended a Prussian cadet school from the age of five until he was thirteen. At an early age Loewe learned to play piano by ear and helped his father rehearse, and he began composing songs at age seven. He eventually attended a music conservatory in Berlin, one year behind virtuoso Claudio Arrau, and studied with Ferruccio Busoni and Eugene d'Albert. He won the coveted Hollander Medal awarded by the school and gave performances as a concert pianist while still in Germany. At 13, he was the youngest piano soloist ever to appear with the Berlin Philharmonic.

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Friedrich Hollaender
Friedrich Hollaender (born Friedrich Holländer; 18 October 1896 – 18 January 1976) was a German film composer and author.
He was born in London, where his father, operetta composer Victor Hollaender, worked at the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Young Friedrich had a solid music and theatre family background: his uncle Gustav was director of the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, his uncle Felix Hollaender was a well-known novelist and drama critic, who later worked with Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater.
In 1899 Friedrich's family returned to Germany, his father began teaching at the Stern Conservatory, where his son became a student in Engelbert Humperdinck's master class. In the evening he played the piano at silent film performances in local cinemas, developing the art of musical improvisation. By the age of 18 he was employed as a répétiteur at the New German Theatre in Prague and also was put in charge of troop entertainment at the Western Front of World War I.
Having finished his studies, he composed music for productions by Max Reinhardt and became involved in cabaret and wrote music for the film, The Blue Angel (1930). He left Nazi Germany (because he was Jewish) and emigrated to the United States of America where he wrote the music for over a hundred films, including Destry Rides Again (1939), A Foreign Affair (1948), The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953 Academy Award nomination) and Sabrina (1954). He also wrote as "Frederick Hollander", the semi-autobiographical novel Those Torn From Earth which was released in 1941. Many of his songs were made famous by Marlene Dietrich. He can be seen as the piano accompanist in A Foreign Affair (where he speaks a few words of dialog). He received four Academy Award nominations for composition. In 1956 he returned to Germany. He was married to Blandine Ebinger and died in Munich in 1976 and is buried in Waldfriedhof Dahlem.

wn.com/Friedrich_Hollaender

Gene de Paul
Gene de Paul (June 17, 1919 – February 27, 1988) was an American pianist, composer and songwriter.
Born in New York City, he served in the United States Army during World War II.
He joined the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) in 1941 and went on to compose the music for many motion pictures. He was nominated (with Don Raye) for an Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song in 1942 for the song "Pig Foot Pete" from the movie Hellzapoppin. The song actually was not included in that movie, but in the 1941 feature, Keep 'Em Flying, and was thus ineligible for the nomination and award. The award was given to "White Christmas".
De Paul collaborated with Don Raye, Carolyn Leigh, Charles Rinker and others at Universal Studios, Walt Disney Studios and other Hollywood companies.
De Paul composed the 1953 hit song Teach Me Tonight.
De Paul was one of the composers of the songs and dances for the 1954 musical film Seven Brides for Seven Brothers for which he was nominated for the 1983 Tony Award for Best Original Score.

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George Barrie
George Barrie (9 February 1912 – 16 November 2002) was the owner and CEO of Fabergé Inc. from 1964 to 1984. He was nominated for two Oscars for Best Original Song and created Brut (cologne). Though not one of the first to use celebrities to advertise, he was one of those that made it commonplace.

Born in New York City and raised in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, he trained to be a musician. But in need of steady work, Barrie took a salesman job with the hair products company Rayette during the 1930s.
Rayette and Barrie purchased the perfume and hair-care company Fabergé Inc. for $26 million in 1964, and the Brut line began achieving international success soon after.
Barrie was considered to be a pioneer in the area of celebrity endorsements, as he wooed stars such as Laurence Harvey, Cary Grant, Farrah Fawcett, Joe Namath, Roger Moore, Muhammad Ali and Margaux Hemingway to pitch company products.
Barrie and his Brut Productions produced the very successful film A Touch of Class (1973) which starred Glenda Jackson and George Segal, as well as Whiffs (1975), Sweet Hostage (1975), Thieves (1977), Nasty Habits (1977), and Fingers (1978).

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George Bruns
George Bruns (July 3, 1914 - May 23, 1983) was a composer of music for film and television who worked on many Disney films. He was nominated for four Academy Awards for his work.
Bruns was born in Sandy, Oregon and went to college at Oregon State University, where he was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, graduating in 1936. In 1946 he was music director at radio station KEX in Portland, Oregon.
Among his work is the song "Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me)" (which he co-wrote with Xavier Atencio), used in the Disney theme park attraction Pirates of the Caribbean and the movies based on that ride. He also co-wrote "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" with Tom W. Blackburn, as well as the song "Love" for the Disney animated film Robin Hood. During the mid 1950's, he adapted the music from Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty ballet for use as background score in the 1959 Disney film version. He also composed the score for The Jungle Book and provided Herbie the Love Bug with his sprightly theme song featured prominently throughout the series.

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George Fenton
George Fenton (born 19 October 1950) is a British composer best known for his work writing film scores and music for television, although he also writes music for the theatre. His real name is George Howe but he is better known by his pseudonym of George Fenton.
Fenton has composed the score for over seventy feature films. This is a small selection of his film and television credits.
For a comprehensive filmography see the George Fenton's Internet Movie Database (IMDb) entry link in External links.
Fenton was born George Richard Ian Howe in London, and attended St Edward's School in Oxford, starting in 1963. He has credited the school's Deputy Director of Music at the time, the late Peter Whitehouse, as an early influence. Fenton is now a Governor of the School.
Initially Fenton worked as an actor, getting an early break with a part in Alan Bennett's play Forty Years On. He had some minor success appearing in the film Private Road, the soap opera Emmerdale Farm and in Alan Bennett's first television play A Day Out directed by Stephen Frears and broadcast in 1972.

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George Gershwin
George Gershwin (September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known. Among his best known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris, as well as the opera Porgy and Bess.
Born in Brooklyn to a Ukrainian father of Jewish descent and a Russian mother, Gershwin studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark and Henry Cowell. He began his career as a song plugger, but soon thereafter started composing Broadway theatre works with his brother Ira Gershwin and Buddy DeSylva. He moved to Paris in an attempt to study with Nadia Boulanger, where he began to compose An American in Paris. After returning to New York City, he wrote Porgy and Bess with Ira and author DuBose Heyward. Initially a commercial failure, Porgy and Bess is now considered one of the most important American operas of the Twentieth Century. Gershwin moved to Hollywood and composed numerous film scores until his death in 1937 from a brain tumor.

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George Tibbles
George Tibbles (June 7, 1913 - February 14, 1987) was a screenwriter, contributing to TV series such as Leave it to Beaver, Date with the Angels, The Munsters, Alice, Family Affair and Who's the Boss?. George's greatest achievement however, was on My Three Sons the sitcom starring Fred MacMurray which he created under the ever watchful eye of Executive Producer Don Fedderson. He wrote a massive 96 scripts of the show's 380 episodes (more than that of any other writer) and served the series as a Line Producer (in Season 2) and its Story Editor and Consultant for most of the twelve seasons the show was on the air. He died of cancer in 1987. His son Douglas Tibbles was also a television script writer who co-wrote teleplays both solely and with his father on numerous shows.
Tibbles also wrote the popular Oscar-nominated song "The Woody Woodpecker Song" and the theme for the CBS series Bringing Up Buddy, which ran from 1960-1961 and Pistols 'n' Petticoats in 1966-67.
His birthplace was New York City. He died in Rancho Mirage, California.

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Georgie Stoll
Georgie Stoll (7 May 1905, Minneapolis, MN - 18 January 1985, Monterey, CA) was a musical director, conductor, composer and jazz violinist, associated with the Golden Age of MGM musicals and performers from the 1940s to 1960s. Born George Martin Stoll, he was also later credited as George E. Stoll (sometimes without the middle initial).
Stoll made his musical debut as a boy violin prodigy, gaining nationwide fame. He toured North America as a jazz violinist on the Fanchon and Marco circuit and was part of the Jazzmania Quintet, appearing with Edythe Flynn in an early 1927 sound short. In San Diego, he became an orchestra and trio leader (his Rhythm Aces) and started to feature with Jack Oakie on radio programs, such as Camel Cigarette and NBC's Shell Oil Program. In 1934, Bing Crosby selected Stoll as his musical director for the second series of the CBS Woodbury radio programs. For Decca, Georgie Stoll and His Orchestra accompanied Crosby and Louis Armstrong in the successful 1936 recordings of Pennies from Heaven. Stoll and his orchestra appeared on screen the same year in MGM's Swing Banditry.

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Giorgio Moroder
Hansjörg "Giorgio" Moroder, named on record sleeves often only Giorgio (born 26 April 1940, Urtijëi, South Tyrol, Italy) is an Italian (of Ladin ethnicity) record producer, songwriter and performer based in Los Angeles. When in Munich in the 1970s, he started his own record label called Oasis Records, which several years later became a subdivision of Casablanca Records. He collaborated with Donna Summer during the era of disco (including "Love to Love You Baby" and "I Feel Love") and is the founder of the former Musicland Studios in Munich, which was used as a recording studio by artists including the Electric Light Orchestra, Led Zeppelin, Queen and Elton John.
In addition to producing several hits with Donna Summer, Moroder also produced a number of electronic disco hits for The Three Degrees, two albums for Sparks, a handful of songs on Bonnie Tyler's album Bitterblue as well as her 1985 single "Here She Comes" and a score of songs for performers including David Bowie, Irene Cara, Madleen Kane, Melissa Manchester, Blondie, Japan, and France Joli.

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Glen Hansard
Glen Hansard (born 21 April 1970 in Dublin, Ireland) is the Academy Award–winning principal songwriter and vocalist/guitarist for Irish group The Frames and one half of folk rock duo, The Swell Season. He is also known for his acting, having appeared in the BAFTA winning film The Commitments, as well as starring in the film Once. His song, "Falling Slowly", from Once, co-written with his co-star Markéta Irglová, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2007, and earned him ten other major awards or nominations between 2007-08.
Hansard quit school at age 13 to begin busking on local Dublin streets. He formed The Frames in 1990, and they've been staples of the Irish music scene ever since. Their first album, Another Love Song, was released on Island Records in 1991, and their most recent, The Cost, was released in 2006.^{[citation needed]}
Hansard came to international attention as guitar player Outspan Foster in the 1991 Alan Parker film The Commitments, after attending the New York Film Academy School of Acting. He has often stated that he regretted taking the role, because he felt it distracted him from his music career. In 2003, he presented the television programme Other Voices: Songs from a Room, which showcased Irish music talent on RTÉ.

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Gus Kahn
Gustav Gerson Kahn (November 6, 1886 – October 8, 1941) was a musician, songwriter and lyricist.
Kahn was born in Koblenz, Germany in 1886. The family emigrated from there to the United States and moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1890. After graduating from high school, he worked as a clerk in a mail order business before launching one of the most successful and prolific careers from Tin Pan Alley. Kahn married Grace LeBoy in 1916 and they had two children, Donald and Irene.
In his early days, Kahn wrote special material for vaudeville. In 1913 he began a productive partnership with the well-established composer Egbert van Alstyne, with whom he created several notable hits of the era, including "Memories" and, along with Tony Jackson, "Pretty Baby." Later, he began writing lyrics for composer and bandleader Isham Jones. This partnership led to one of Kahn's best-known works, "I'll See You in My Dreams," which became the title of a movie based on his life, starring Danny Thomas as Kahn.
Throughout the 1920s, Kahn continued to contribute to Broadway scores such as Holka Polka (1925), Kitty's Kisses (1926), Artists and Models (1927), Whoopee! (1928), and Show Girl (1929). He went on to write several movies, mainly for MGM.

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Gwilym Emyr Owen III
Gwilym "Gwil" Emyr Owen III (born July 24, 1960, Syracuse, New York) is an American singer/songwriter of Welsh heritage. He attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio but did not graduate. He moved to Nashville in 1983 and formed the band The Thieves, which recorded the album "Seduced by Money" for Bug/Capitol Records in 1988. Since then, he has performed as a solo singer/songwriter, and his songs have been covered by Toni Price, Keith Richards, Irma Thomas and Jack Ingram, among others. He was an Academy Award nominee in 1999 for "A Soft Place to Fall" (co-written with Allison Moorer) from the movie The Horse Whisperer.

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Hal David
Harold Lane "Hal" David (born May 25, 1921) is an American lyricist. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York. David is best known for his collaborations with composer Burt Bacharach.
David was born in New York City, New York, and is credited with popular music lyrics beginning in the 1940s with material written for band leader Sammy Kaye, and Guy Lombardo. He worked with Morty Nevins of The Three Suns on four songs for the feature film Two Gals and a Guy (1951), starring Janis Paige and Robert Alda.
In 1957, David met composer Burt Bacharach at Famous Music in the Brill Building in New York. The two teamed up and wrote their first hit "The Story of My Life", recorded by Marty Robbins in 1957. Later that year Perry Como had a hit with their "Magic Moments". Subsequently, Bacharach and David wrote some of the most enduring songs in American popular music, many for Dionne Warwick, but also for The Carpenters, Dusty Springfield, B. J. Thomas, Gene Pitney, Tom Jones, Jackie DeShannon, and others in the 1960s and early 1970s.

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Harold Adamson
Harold Adamson (December 10, 1906 – August 17, 1980) was an American lyricist during the 1930s and 1940s.
Adamson, the son of Harold Adamson and Marion "Minnie" Campbell Adamson, was born and raised in Greenville, New Jersey. Adamson suffered from polio as a child which limited the use of his right hand. Initially, Adamson was interested in acting but he began writing songs and poetry as a teenager. He went on to studying acting at the University of Kansas and Harvard. Ultimately he entered into a songwriting contract with MGM in 1933. During his stint with MGM he wrote many popular and successful songs, including the theme song for the hit sitcom "I Love Lucy".
He was nominated for five Academy Award Nominations for lyrics to several original movie scores. He was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972.
Harold Adamson died in Beverly Hills, California.

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Harold Arlen
Harold Arlen (February 15, 1905 - April 23, 1986) was an American composer of popular music, having written over 500 songs, a number of which have become known the world over. In addition to composing the songs for The Wizard of Oz, including the classic 1938 song, "Over the Rainbow,” Arlen is a highly regarded contributor to the Great American Songbook. "Over the Rainbow," in fact, was voted the twentieth century's No. 1 song by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
Arlen was born Hyman Arluck, in Buffalo, New York, the child of a Jewish cantor. His twin brother died the next day. He learned the piano as a youth and formed a band as a young man. He achieved some local success as a pianist and singer and moved to New York City in his early 20s. He worked as an accompanist in vaudeville. At this point, he changed his name to Harold Arlen. Between 1926 and about 1934, Arlen appeared occasionally as a band vocalist on records by The Buffalodians, Red Nichols, Joe Venuti, Leo Reisman and Eddie Duchin, usually singing his own compositions.

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Harold Faltermeyer
Harold Faltermeyer (born Harald Faltermeier; October 5, 1952) is a German musician, keyboardist, composer and record producer.
He is recognized as one of the composers/producers who best captured the zeitgeist of 1980s synthpop in film scores.^{[citation needed]} He is best known for writing and composing "Axel F" electronic theme for Beverly Hills Cop and the Top Gun Anthem from the soundtrack for Top Gun—both often imitated, highly influential instrumental hits that to some extent practically redefined action film scoring in the '80s.
As a session musician, arranger and producer, Faltermeyer has worked with several international pop stars including Donna Summer, Amanda Lear, Patti LaBelle, Barbra Streisand, Glenn Frey, Blondie, Laura Branigan, La Toya Jackson, Billy Idol, Jennifer Rush, Alexis, Cheap Trick, Sparks, Bob Seger, Chris Thompson, Bonnie Tyler, Valerie Claire and Pet Shop Boys.
He has won two Grammy Awards: the first in 1986 for Best Album of original score written for a motion picture or television special, as a co-writer of the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack; and the second in 1987 for Best Pop Instrumental Performance with guitarist Steve Stevens for Top Gun Anthem from the soundtrack.

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Harry Owens
Harry Owens (18 April 1902 – 12 December 1986) was an American composer, bandleader and songwriter best known for his song "Sweet Leilani."
Harry Robert Owens was born April 18, 1902, in O'Neill, Nebraska. He learned to play the cornet in a small band on an Indian reservation in Montana.
Owens was working the vaudeville circuit by age 14. He studied for a career in law, but then started a band in 1926, when he was booked into the Lafayette Cafe in Los Angeles and auditioned a young Bing Crosby.
The big turning point in his career came in 1934 with his arrival in Hawaii and his appointment as music director of The Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki. He tried to learn all he could about the local culture by mixing and working with native Hawaiians. He learned many traditional and more modern Hawaiian songs and tunes which he wrote down and orchestrated using Western notation for the first time. Many had never been written down before, much less orchestrated. He reorganized the Royal Hawaiians by splitting the band into Hawaiian and haole instrumental sections. His band featured the steel guitar, which had a trademark sound, producing tuneful and rhythmic dance music with a strong Hawaiian flavour. Hilo Hattie was a featured performer with The Royal Hawaiian Hotel Orchestra. Beginning in 1935, Owens and his orchestra were featured on the popular Saturday night radio show, Hawaii Calls.

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Harry Revel
Harry Revel (21 December 1905 – 3 November 1958) was an English composer of musical theatre.
Revel was born in London. Before emigrating to the United States in 1929, he wrote musicals for productions in Paris, Copenhagen, Vienna and London.
Once in the US, he worked on Broadway, writing the scores for Ziegfeld Follies of 1931, Meet My Sister and Are You With It?. He later moved to Hollywood. He wrote scores for the films Sitting Pretty, Broadway Through a Keyhole, We're Not Dressing, She Loves Me Not, Shoot the Works, College Rhythm, Love in Bloom, Paris in the Spring, Stolen Harmony, Two for Tonight, Collegiate, Stowaway, Poor Little Rich Girl, Ali Baba Goes to Town, Wake Up and Live, You Can't Have Everything, Head Over Heels, Love and Kisses, Four Jacks and a Jill and Love Finds Andy Hardy.
Harry Revel collaborated with lyricists Mack Gordon, Mort Greene, Paul Francis Webster and Arnold Horwitt. In 1934 he appeared in Hollywood Rhythm, a short film purporting to show the songwriting team of Mack Gordon and Harry Revel brainstorming the score for College Rhythm.

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Harry Warren
Harry Warren (December 24, 1893 – September 22, 1981) was an American composer and lyricist. Warren was the first major American songwriter to write primarily for film. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song eleven times and won three Oscars for composing "Lullaby of Broadway", "You'll Never Know" and "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe". He wrote the music for the first blockbuster film musical, 42nd Street, choreographed by Busby Berkeley, with whom he would collaborate on many musical films.
Over a career spanning four decades, Warren wrote over 800 songs. Other well-known Warren hits included "I Only Have Eyes for You", "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby", "Jeepers Creepers", "The Gold Diggers' Song (We're in the Money)", "That's Amore", "The More I See You", "At Last" and "Chattanooga Choo Choo" (the last of which was the first gold record in history). Warren was one of America's most prolific film composers,and his songs have been featured in over 300 films.

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Henry Krieger
Henry Krieger (born February 9, 1945 in New York City) is an American composer.
Krieger wrote the music for the Broadway shows Dreamgirls (1981, with lyrics and book by Tom Eyen), The Tap Dance Kid (1983), and Side Show (1997), as well as other works of musical theatre.
He was nominated for the Tony Awards for Best Score for both Dreamgirls and Side Show, won a Grammy Award for the cast album of Dreamgirls and received three Academy Award nominations for the songs he wrote for the 2006 film.
Born in New York City, Krieger grew up in Westchester County, New York and attended school in Scarborough, New York, which had a theatre that was a replica of the Helen Hayes Theatre. There he played in Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe and Ruddigore. He became interested in theatre and the dramatic arts, and he later studied creative and liberal arts at the American University in Washington, D.C., and Columbia University in New York.

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Henry Mancini
Enrico Nicola "Henry" Mancini (April 16, 1924 – June 14, 1994) was an American composer, conductor and arranger, best remembered for his film and television scores. He won a record number of Grammy Awards (20), plus a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in 1995. His best-known works include the jazz-idiom theme to The Pink Panther film series ("The Pink Panther Theme"), the Peter Gunn Theme from the television series, and back-to-back Academy Awards for the songs "Moon River" from the Blake Edwards film Breakfast at Tiffany's and "Days of Wine and Roses" from Edwards' film Days of Wine and Roses. He also composed the score of famous films such as Charade, The Great Race, Wait Until Dark or Silver Streak.
Mancini was born in the Little Italy neighborhood of Cleveland, and grew up near Pittsburgh, in the steel town of West Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. His parents emigrated from the Abruzzo region of Italy. Mancini's father, Quinto, (born March 13, 1893, Scanno, Italy) was a steelworker, who made his only child begin piccolo lessons at the age of eight. When Mancini was 12 years old, he began piano lessons. Quinto and Henry played flute together in the Aliquippa Italian immigrant band, "Sons of Italy". After graduating from Aliquippa High School in 1942, Mancini attended the renowned Juilliard School of Music in New York. In 1943, after roughly one year at Juilliard, his studies were interrupted when he was drafted into the United States Army. In 1945, he participated in the liberation of a concentration camp in southern Germany.

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Howard Ashman
Howard Elliott Ashman (May 17, 1950 – March 14, 1991) was an American playwright and lyricist. Ashman first studied at Boston University and Goddard College (with a stop at Tufts University's Summer Theater) and then went on to achieve his master's degree from Indiana University in 1974. He collaborated with Alan Menken on several films, notably animated features for Disney, Ashman writing the lyrics and Menken composing the music.
Ashman was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Shirley Thelma (née Glass) and Raymond Albert Ashman, an ice cream cone manufacturer. He was the artistic director of the WPA Theater in New York. His first two plays, Cause Maggie's Afraid of the Dark and Dreamstuff, were met with mixed reviews. His play The Confirmation was produced in 1979 at Princeton's McCarter Theater and starred Herschel Bernardi. He first worked with Alan Menken on a 1979 musical adapted from Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. They also collaborated on Little Shop of Horrors with Ashman as director, lyricist, and librettist, winning the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics.

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Howard Shore
Howard Leslie Shore (born October 18, 1946) is a Canadian composer, notable for his film scores. He has composed the scores for over 80 films, most notably the scores for The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, for which he won three Academy Awards. He is also a consistent collaborator with director David Cronenberg, having scored all but one of his films since 1979.
He has also composed a few concert works including one opera, The Fly, based on the plot (though not his score) of Cronenberg's 1986 film premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on 2 July 2008., a short piece Fanfare for the Wanamaker Organ and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and a short overture for the Swiss 21st Century Symphony Orchestra.
Shore is a three-time winner of the Academy Award, and has also won three Golden Globe Awards and four Grammy Awards. He is the uncle of film composer Ryan Shore. Shore serves on the Board of Trustees at his alma mater, Berklee College of Music.
Shore was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the son of Bernice (née Ash) and Mac Shore. He studied music at Berklee College of Music in Boston after graduating from Forest Hill Collegiate Institute. From 1969 to 1972, he performed with the group Lighthouse. In 1970 he was the music director of Lorne Michaels and Hart Pomerantz's short-lived TV program The Hart & Lorne Terrific Hour. Shore wrote the music for Canadian magician Doug Henning's magical/musical Spellbound in 1974, and he was the musical director for Lorne Michaels' hugely influential late-night NBC comedy show Saturday Night Live from 1975 to 1980, appearing in many musical sketches, including Howard Shore and His All-Nurse Band, and dressed as a beekeeper for a John Belushi/Dan Aykroyd performance of the Slim Harpo classic I'm a King Bee. Shore also suggested the name for The Blues Brothers to Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.

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Huey Lewis
Huey Lewis (Hugh Anthony Cregg III, born July 5, 1950) is an American musician, songwriter, and actor.
Lewis sings lead and plays harmonica for his band, Huey Lewis and the News, in addition to writing or co-writing many of the band's songs. The band is perhaps best known for their third album, Sports, and their contribution to the soundtrack of the 1985 feature film Back to the Future. Lewis previously played with the band Clover from 1972 to 1979.
Huey Lewis was born in New York City. His father, Hugh Anthony Cregg II, was an Irish American from Boston and his mother, Magda, was a Polish refugee.
Lewis was raised in Marin County, California, attending Strawberry Point Elementary School (where he skipped second grade) and Edna Maguire Junior High School in Mill Valley. When he was 13, his parents divorced and he attended and later graduated from the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, in 1967, where he achieved a perfect score of 800 on the math portion of the SAT. Lewis applied to and was accepted by Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

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Hugh Martin
Hugh Martin (August 11, 1914 – March 11, 2011) was an American musical theater and film composer, arranger, vocal coach, and playwright. He is best known for his score for the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me In St. Louis, in which Judy Garland sang three Martin songs, "The Boy Next Door," "The Trolley Song," and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." The last of these has become a Christmas season standard in the United States and around the English-speaking world. Martin became a close friend of Garland and was her accompanist at many of her concert performances in the 1950s, including her appearances at the Palace Theater.
Martin was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1914. He attended Birmingham-Southern College where he studied music.
He was a member of the Beta Beta Chapter of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity^{[citation needed]}
Martin wrote the music, and in some cases the lyrics, for five Broadway musicals: Best Foot Forward (1941); Look Ma, I'm Dancin'! (1948); Make a Wish (1951); High Spirits (1964) (music and lyrics, with Timothy Gray); and Meet Me In St. Louis (1989), a stage version of the film with an expanded score by Martin and Ralph Blane.

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Hy Heath
Songwriter, composer and author Hy Heath (1890 - 1965) was educated in public schools and then became a comedian in musical comedy, vaudeville, minstrel and burlesque shows. His chief musical collaborators included Johnny Lange and Fred Rose. His most successful composition was 'Mule Train' which earned him an Academy Award nomination (it was featured in the 1950 film "Singing Guns").

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Hy Zaret
Hy Zaret (August 21, 1907 – July 2, 2007) was an American Tin Pan Alley lyricist and composer best known as the co-author of the 1955 hit "Unchained Melody", one of the most recorded songs of the 20th century.
Zaret was born Hyman Harry Zaritsky in New York City and attended West Virginia University and Brooklyn Law School, where he received an LLB. He scored his first major success in 1935, when he teamed up with Saul Chaplin and Sammy Cahn to co-write the pop standard "Dedicated to You." The early 1940s brought some collaborations with Alex C. Kramer and Joan Whitney, including 1941's "It All Comes Back to Me Now" and the socially conscious, WWII-themed "My Sister and I." Zaret also wrote lyrics for an English translation of the French Resistance song "The Partisan" (aka "The Song of the French Partisan"), which was later covered by Leonard Cohen. In 1944 he and Lou Singer wrote the popular hit novelty song "One Meatball", based on a song popular among Harvard undergraduates.
Zaret's biggest success, though, was "Unchained Melody," a song he co-wrote with film composer Alex North for the 1955 prison film Unchained (hence the title), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. No fewer than three versions of the song—by Les Baxter, Al Hibbler, and Roy Hamilton -- hit the Top Ten that year, with Hibbler's version ranking as the best-known for the next ten years. The song was also recorded successfully by Jimmy Young and Liberace, and covered by countless others, but the Righteous Brothers' 1965 version—given a supremely romantic production by Phil Spector -- became the definitive take, reaching the pop Top Five. That recording was revived in 1990 thanks to its inclusion in the film, Ghost, and nearly reached the Top Ten all over again. Elvis Presley & Roy Orbison also recorded versions of the song.

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Ira Gershwin
Ira Gershwin (December 6, 1896 – August 17, 1983) was an American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs of the 20th century.
With George he wrote more than a dozen Broadway shows, featuring songs such as "I Got Rhythm", "Embraceable You", "The Man I Love" and "Someone to Watch Over Me". He was also responsible, along with DuBose Heyward, for the libretto to George's opera Porgy and Bess.
The success the brothers had with their collaborative works has often overshadowed the creative role that Ira played. However, his mastery of songwriting continued after the early death of George. He wrote additional hit songs with composers Jerome Kern ("Long Ago (and Far Away)"), Kurt Weill and Harold Arlen.
His critically acclaimed book Lyrics on Several Occasions of 1959, an amalgam of autobiography and annotated anthology, is an important source for studying the art of the lyricist in the golden age of American popular song.

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Irene Cara
Irene Cara (born March 18, 1959) is an American singer and actress. She became famous for her role in the 1980 film Fame, earning her a Golden Globe nomination, and her recording of the song "Fame" became an international hit. Cara won an Academy Award in 1984 in the category of Best Original Song for co-writing "Flashdance... What a Feeling, which also became an international hit."
She married Hollywood stuntman Conrad Palmisano in 1986. They divorced in 1991.
Cara's father, Gaspar Cara, was Puerto Rican and Cara's mother, Louise, was an American of Cuban descent. Cara has two sisters and two brothers. At age three, Irene Cara was one of five finalists for the 'Little Miss America' pageant. Cara began to play the piano "by ear" and soon thereafter, she began seriously studying music, acting, and dance. Cara's performing career started when she was a child on Spanish-language television, professionally singing and dancing. She made early TV appearances on the Original Amateur Hour (singing in Spanish) and Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show. She was a regular on PBS’s educational program The Electric Company, which starred Bill Cosby, Rita Moreno, and Morgan Freeman. As a child, Cara recorded a Latin-market Spanish-language record; an English Christmas album soon followed. She also appeared in a major concert tribute to Duke Ellington which also featured Stevie Wonder, Sammy Davis Jr, and Roberta Flack.

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Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin (May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was an American composer and lyricist of Jewish heritage, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history. He published his first song, "Marie from Sunny Italy", in 1907 and had his first major international hit, "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 1911.
"Alexander's Ragtime Band" sparked an international dance craze in places as far away as Berlin's native Russia, which also "flung itself into the ragtime beat with an abandon bordering on mania." Over the years he was known for writing music and lyrics in the American vernacular: uncomplicated, simple and direct, with his aim being to "reach the heart of the average American" whom he saw as the "real soul of the country."
He wrote hundreds of songs, many becoming major hits, which made him "a legend" before he turned thirty. During his 60-year career he wrote an estimated 1,500 songs, including the scores for 19 Broadway shows and 18 Hollywood films, with his songs nominated eight times for Academy Awards. Many songs became popular themes and anthems, including "Easter Parade", "White Christmas", "Happy Holiday", "This is the Army, Mr. Jones", and "There's No Business Like Show Business". His Broadway musical and 1942 film, This is the Army, with Ronald Reagan, had Kate Smith singing Berlin's "God Bless America" which was first performed in 1938. Smith still performed the song on her 1960 CBS television series, The Kate Smith Show. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Celine Dion recorded it as a tribute, making it #1 on the charts.

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Jack Lawrence
Jack Lawrence (September 2, 1995) was an American songwriter. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1975.
Jack Lawrence was born Jacob Louis Schwartz in Brooklyn, New York City to an Orthodox Jewish family of modest means as the third of four sons. His parents Barney (Beryl) Schwartz and Fanny (Fruma) Goldman Schwartz were first cousins who had run away from their home in Belaya Tserkov (Bila Tserkva, Ukraine) to come to America in 1904.
Lawrence wrote songs while still a child, but because of parental pressure after he graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School, he enrolled in the First Institute of Podiatry where he received a doctoral degree in 1932. The same year, his first song was published and he immediately decided to make a career of songwriting rather than podiatry. That song, "Play, Fiddle, Play", won international fame and he became a member of ASCAP that year at age 20.
In the early 1940s Lawrence and several fellow hit makers formed a sensational review called "Songwriters on Parade", performing all across the Eastern seaboard on the Loew's and Keith circuits.

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Jacques Demy
Jacques Demy (5 June 1931 – 27 October 1990) was one of the most approachable filmmakers to appear in the wake of the French New Wave. Uninterested in the formal experimentation of Alain Resnais, or the political agitation of Jean-Luc Godard, Demy instead created a self-contained fantasy world closer to that of François Truffaut, drawing on musicals, fairytales and the golden age of Hollywood.
After working with the animator Paul Grimault and the filmmaker Georges Rouquier, Demy directed his first feature film, Lola, in 1961, with Anouk Aimée playing the eponymous cabaret singer. The Demy universe here emerges full-fledged. Characters burst into song (courtesy of composer and lifelong Demy-collaborator Michel Legrand); iconic Hollywood imagery is lovingly appropriated as in the opening scene with the man in a white Stetson in the Cadillac, daringly set to Beethoven's "Seventh Symphony"); plot is dictated by the director's fascination with fate, and stock themes of chance encounters and long-lost love; and the setting, as with so many of Demy's films, is the French Atlantic coast of his childhood, specifically the seaport town of Nantes.

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James Horner
James Roy Horner (born August 14, 1953) is an American composer, orchestrator, and conductor of orchestral and film music. He is noted for the integration of choral and electronic elements in many of his film scores, and for frequent use of Celtic musical elements. His score to the 1997 film Titanic remains the best selling orchestral film soundtrack of all time.
In addition, Horner has scored over 100 films, frequently collaborating with acclaimed directors such as James Cameron and Ron Howard. Some of his most noteworthy works include Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Cocoon (1985), An American Tail (1986), Aliens (1986), The Land Before Time (1988), Willow (1988), Glory (1989), Field of Dreams (1989), The Rocketeer (1991), Legends of the Fall (1994), Apollo 13 (1995), Braveheart (1995), The Mask of Zorro (1998), A Beautiful Mind (2001), Troy (2004), and Avatar (2009).
Horner has won two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, three Satellite Awards, three Saturn Awards, and has been nominated for three BAFTA Awards. His body of work is also notable for including the scores to the two highest-grossing films of all time; Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009), both of which were directed by James Cameron.

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James Ingram
James Ingram (born February 16, 1952, Akron, Ohio) is an American soul musician. He is best known as a vocalist. He is also a self-taught musician who plays piano, guitar, bass, drums and keyboards. Additionally, he is a producer and songwriter.
Born in 1952, Ingram lived with his mother and father until he was 10, then moved in with his grandmother.
In 1981, Ingram provided the vocals to "Just Once" and "One Hundred Ways" on Quincy Jones's album The Dude. He won a Grammy award for best R&B vocal performance for his work on this album. Ingram's debut album, It's Your Night, appeared in 1983, including the ballad "There's No Easy Way." He also worked with other notable R&B artists such as Ray Charles, Anita Baker, Viktor Lazlo, Nancy Wilson, Natalie Cole, and Kenny Rogers. In October, 1990, he scored a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with the love ballad "I Don't Have the Heart", from his It's Real album.
But Ingram was best known throughout the decade for his hit collaborations. He went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in Feb. 1983 with Patti Austin on "Baby, Come to Me", a song made popular on TV's General Hospital. A second Austin–Ingram duet, "How Do You Keep the Music Playing?", was featured in the movie Best Friends and earned an Oscar nomination. A few years later, he won a 1985 Grammy Award for "Yah Mo B There", a duet with Michael McDonald. And he teamed up with Kenny Rogers and Kim Carnes for the Top 40 ballad "What About Me?" in 1984. In 1985, he participated in the charity single "We Are the World".

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James Newton Howard
James Newton Howard (born June 9, 1951) is an American composer best known for his scores to motion pictures. He is one of the most popular and respected composers for cinema, and has scored over 100 films. The recipient of eight Academy Award nominations, some of Howard's best known film scores include The Prince of Tides (1991), The Fugitive (1993), Dinosaur (2000), King Kong (2005), I Am Legend (2007), and, most recently Green Lantern (2011) and The Hunger Games (2012). He is also known for his collaboration with director M. Night Shyamalan, having scored all his films since The Sixth Sense (1999).
Howard was born in Los Angeles, California. Twenty-five years after the death of his father, Howard learned that his father's family was Jewish (Howard later became a practicing Reconstructionist Jew).
Throughout his career as a composer/musician/songwriter, he has scored films of all scales and genres, earning multiple award nominations for his work. Howard began studying music as a child and went on to attend the Thacher School in Ojai, California, the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California, and then majored in piano performance at the University of Southern California.

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James Schamus
James Schamus is an award-winning screenwriter The Ice Storm and producer Brokeback Mountain, and is CEO of Focus Features, the motion picture production, financing, and worldwide distribution company whose films have included Lost in Translation, Milk, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Pianist, Coraline, and The Kids Are All Right. He is also Professor of Professional Practice in Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where he teaches film history and theory. He is the author of Carl Theodor Dreyer's Gertrud: The Moving Word, published by the University of Washington Press. He earned his BA, MA, and Ph.D. in English from U.C. Berkeley.
Schamus also participates as a member of the Jury for the NYICFF, a local New York City Film Festival dedicated to screening films for children between the ages of 3 and 18.

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James V. Monaco
James Vincent Monaco (January 13, 1885 – October 16, 1945) was an Italian-born American composer of popular music.
Monaco was born in Fornia, Italy; his family emigrated to Albany, New York when he was six. He worked as a ragtime player in Chicago before moving to New York. Monaco's first successful song "Oh, You Circus Day" was featured in the 1912 Broadway revue Hanky Panky. Further success came with "Row, Row, Row" (lyrics by William Jerome) in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1912. Perhaps his best remembered song is "You Made Me Love You (I Didn't Want to Do It)" (lyrics by Joseph McCarthy) introduced by Al Jolson in 1913 and performed by Judy Garland with revised lyrics as "Dear Mr Gable" in 1937.
Monaco worked with a number of lyricists before moving to Hollywood where he teamed with lyricist Johnny Burke to produce songs for several Bing Crosby films.
Monaco died in Beverly Hills, California.
Four of Monaco's songs received Academy Award nominations for Best Song:
Monaco was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.

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James Van Heusen
Jimmy Van Heusen (January 26, 1913 - February 6, 1990), was an American composer. He wrote songs mainly for films and television (but also for the theater), and won an Emmy and four Academy Awards for Best Original Song.
Born Edward Chester Babcock in Syracuse, New York, he began writing music while at high school. He renamed himself at age 16, after the famous shirt makers, Phillips-Van Heusen, to use as his off-air name during local shows. His close friends called him "Chet."
Studying at Cazenovia Seminary and Syracuse University, he became friends with Jerry Arlen, the younger brother of Harold Arlen. With the elder Arlen's help, Van Heusen wrote songs for the Cotton Club revue, including "Harlem Hospitality."
He then became a staff pianist for some of the Tin Pan Alley publishers, and wrote "It's the Dreamer in Me" (1938) with lyrics by Jimmy Dorsey.
Collaborating with lyricist Eddie DeLange, on songs such as "Heaven Can Wait", "So Help Me", and "Darn That Dream", his work became more prolific, writing over 60 songs in 1940 alone. It was in 1940 that he teamed up with the lyricist Johnny Burke.

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Janet Jackson
Janet Damita Jo Jackson (born May 16, 1966) is an American recording artist and actress. Known for a series of sonically innovative, socially conscious and sexually provocative records, as well as elaborate stage shows, television and film roles, she has been a prominent figure in popular culture for over 25 years. The youngest child of the Jackson family, she began her career with the variety television series The Jacksons in 1976 and went on to appear in other television shows throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, including Good Times and Fame.
After signing a recording contract with A&M in 1982, she came to prominence following the release of her third studio album Control (1986). Her collaborations with record producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis incorporated elements of rhythm and blues, funk, disco, rap, and industrial beats, which led to crossover appeal in popular music. In addition to receiving recognition for the innovation in her records, choreography, music videos, and prominence on radio airplay and MTV, she was acknowledged as a role model for her socially conscious lyrics.

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Jay Livingston
Jay Livingston (March 28, 1915 – October 17, 2001) was an American composer and singer best known as half of a songwriting duo with Ray Evans that specialized in songs composed for films. Livingston wrote the music and Evans the lyrics.
Livingston was born Jacob Harold Levison in McDonald, Pennsylvania; he was Jewish. Livingston studied piano with Harry Archer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and worked as a musician at local clubs while still in high school. He attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he organized a dance band and met Evans, a fellow student in the band. Their professional collaboration began in 1937. Livingston and Evans won the Academy Award for Best Original Song three times, in 1948 for the song Buttons and Bows, written for the movie The Paleface; in 1950 for the song Mona Lisa, written for the movie Captain Carey, U.S.A.; and in 1956 for the song "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)," featured in the movie The Man Who Knew Too Much. Livingston and Evans wrote popular TV themes for shows including Bonanza and Mr. Ed. They also wrote the Christmas song Silver Bells in 1951 for the film The Lemon Drop Kid as well as "Never Let Me Go" for the 1956 film The Scarlet Hour.

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Jeff Bass
Bass Brothers is the professional name for the team of Mark and Jeff Bass, the Detroit producers responsible for grooming megastar Eminem in his early days and collaborating on much of his subsequent music. Before that they worked with George Clinton. Tracks from those sessions ended up on the P-Funk All Stars album Dope Dogs. Jeff Bass is considered one of the most influential people in Eminem's career.
On their work with Eminem, Mark and Jeff Bass are credited as F.B.T. Productions. Although Interscope marketed Dr. Dre as Eminem's major producer in order to boost his credibility as a white rapper in the hip-hop community, the Bass Brothers have in fact produced more individual tracks for the rapper than Dre. Jeff Bass performed the "Public Service Announcements" that introduce both The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP. Most recently, he performed the "Another Public Service Announcement" from D12's album Devil's Night when he got punched by Rondell Benne, who replaces him as the announcer for that album.

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Jerome Kern
Jerome David Kern (January 27, 1885 – November 11, 1945) was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A Fine Romance", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "All the Things You Are", "The Way You Look Tonight", "Long Ago (and Far Away)" and "Who?". He collaborated with many of the leading librettists and lyricists of his era, including George Grossmith Jr., Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse, Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II, Dorothy Fields, Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin and E. Y. Harburg.
A native New Yorker, Kern created dozens of Broadway musicals and Hollywood films in a career that lasted for more than four decades. His musical innovations, such as 4/4 dance rhythms and the employment of syncopation and jazz progressions, built on, rather than rejected, earlier musical theatre tradition. He and his collaborators also employed his melodies to further the action or develop characterization to a greater extent than in the other musicals of his day, creating the model for later musicals. Although dozens of Kern's musicals and musical films were hits, only Show Boat is now regularly revived. Songs from his other shows, however, are still frequently performed and adapted. Although Kern detested jazz arrangements of his songs, many have been adopted by jazz musicians to become standard tunes.

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Jerry Goldsmith
Jerrald King "Jerry" Goldsmith (February 10, 1929 – July 21, 2004) was an American composer and conductor most known for his work in film and television scoring.
He composed scores for such noteworthy films as The Sand Pebbles, Planet of the Apes, Patton, Chinatown, The Wind and the Lion, The Omen, The Boys from Brazil, Alien, Poltergeist, Gremlins, Hoosiers, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Rudy, Air Force One, L.A. Confidential, Mulan, The Mummy, three Rambo films, and five Star Trek films. He was nominated for six Grammy Awards, nine Golden Globes, four BAFTAs, and seventeen Academy Awards. In 1977 he was awarded an Oscar for The Omen.
He collaborated with some of the most prolific directors in film history, including Robert Wise (The Sand Pebbles, Star Trek: The Motion Picture), Howard Hawks (Rio Lobo), Otto Preminger (In Harm's Way), Joe Dante (Gremlins, The 'Burbs, Small Soldiers), Roman Polanski (Chinatown), Ridley Scott (Alien, Legend), Steven Spielberg (Poltergeist, Twilight Zone: The Movie), and Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall, Basic Instinct). However, his most notable collaboration was arguably that with Franklin J. Schaffner, for whom Goldsmith scored such films as Planet of the Apes, Patton, Papillon, and The Boys from Brazil.

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Jerry Livingston
Jerry Livingston (né Jerry Levinson; b. March 25, 1909, Denver, CO; d. July 1, 1987, Beverly Hills, CA) was an American songwriter, and dance orchestra pianist.
Livingston studied music at the University of Arizona. While there he composed his first score for a college musical. He moved to New York City in the 1930s, initially working as a pianist for dance orchestras.
From 1940s to the 1960s he had written songs for numerous films and television series, including Cinderella (1950), Bronco (1958), 77 Sunset Strip (television series, 1958), Hawaiian Eye (television series, 1959), Bourbon Street Beat (television series, 1959), Surfside 6 (television series, 1960), and the song "This is It" (for the 1960s The Bugs Bunny Show). He worked on Tin Pan Alley and co-wrote with Mack David the theme song to Casper the Friendly Ghost.
Livingston's Broadway compositions included the musical Molly and the musical revue Bright Lights of 1944, both with Mack David.
With Mack David he was nominated three times for the Academy Awards, the first time in 1951 for the song "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo" from Cinderella (1950), again in 1960 for the song "The Hanging Tree" from the film of the same name (1959), and the last time for "The Ballad of Cat Ballou" (from the 1965 film Cat Ballou) in 1966.

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Jim Peterik
Jim Peterik (born November 11, 1950, Berwyn, Illinois) is an American musician and songwriter. He is best known as a member of the band Survivor and as vocalist and songwriter of the hit song "Vehicle" by The Ides of March. He also co-wrote the anthem "Eye of the Tiger," the theme from the motion picture Rocky III.
Peterik has co-written songs for the likes of .38 Special, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Blackhawk, Cheap Trick, Sammy Hagar, Cathy Richardson, Van Zant, Brian Wilson, REO Speedwagon and The Beach Boys. He is currently fronting melodic rock band Pride of Lions, smooth-jazz project Jim Peterik's Lifeforce, and has a regular series of yearly concert performances with an all-star cast as World Stage. Jim is also active as a producer and mentor to young, developing talent.
Peterik started performing in 1964 with some of his schoolmates in Berwyn, Illinois, as The Ides of March, named by Larry Millas "after learning about it in history class," Millas stated. Their hits included "Vehicle," "You Wouldn't Listen" and "L.A. Goodbye" in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

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Jimmy Griffin
James Arthur Griffin (August 10, 1943 – January 11, 2005) was a singer, guitarist, and songwriter with the 1970s rock band Bread.
An Academy Award winning songwriter, Griffin was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, but grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. His musical training began when his parents signed him up for accordion lessons. He attended Kingsbury High School in Memphis and Dorsey and Johnny Burnette were his neighbors and role models. After the Burnette brothers moved to Los Angeles, California to further their music careers, Griffin went there to visit them, and managed to secure a recording contract with Reprise Records.
His first album, Summer Holiday, was released in 1963. He had small roles in two films, For Those Who Think Young (1964) and None But the Brave (1965).
In the 1960s, Griffin teamed with fellow songwriter Michael Z. Gordon to write songs for such diverse singers as Ed Ames, Gary Lewis, Bobby Vee, Brian Hyland, The Standells, Leslie Gore, Sandy Nelson and Cher. The pair won a BMI award for "Apologize".

wn.com/Jimmy_Griffin

Jimmy Van Heusen
Jimmy Van Heusen (January 26, 1913 - February 6, 1990), was an American composer. He wrote songs mainly for films and television (but also for the theater), and won an Emmy and four Academy Awards for Best Original Song.
Born Edward Chester Babcock in Syracuse, New York, he began writing music while at high school. He renamed himself at age 16, after the famous shirt makers, Phillips-Van Heusen, to use as his off-air name during local shows. His close friends called him "Chet."
Studying at Cazenovia Seminary and Syracuse University, he became friends with Jerry Arlen, the younger brother of Harold Arlen. With the elder Arlen's help, Van Heusen wrote songs for the Cotton Club revue, including "Harlem Hospitality."
He then became a staff pianist for some of the Tin Pan Alley publishers, and wrote "It's the Dreamer in Me" (1938) with lyrics by Jimmy Dorsey.
Collaborating with lyricist Eddie DeLange, on songs such as "Heaven Can Wait", "So Help Me", and "Darn That Dream", his work became more prolific, writing over 60 songs in 1940 alone. It was in 1940 that he teamed up with the lyricist Johnny Burke.

wn.com/Jimmy_Van_Heusen

Joe Raposo
Joseph Guilherme Raposo, OIH (February 8, 1937 – February 5, 1989) was a Portuguese-American composer, songwriter, pianist, television writer and lyricist, best known for his work on the children's television series Sesame Street, for which he wrote the theme song, as well as classic songs such as "Bein' Green" and "C is for Cookie". He also wrote music for television shows such as The Electric Company, Shining Time Station and the sitcoms Three's Company and The Ropers, including their theme songs. In addition to these works, Raposo also composed extensively for the DePatie-Freleng Enterprises such as Halloween Is Grinch Night, Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You? and The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat.
Raposo was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, the only child of Portuguese immigrant parents Joseph Soares Raposo and Maria da Ascenção Vitorino Raposo. He was a graduate of Harvard College, class of 1958, where he was well known for writing the scores for several Hasty Pudding shows.
Raposo worked in musical theater both before and after his work for The Children's Television Workshop and Sesame Street; musical theater was where he first encountered future collaborator Jim Henson. According to Jonathan Schwartz, during the mid-1960s, before Sesame Street, Raposo performed side music in piano bars in Boston to make ends meet, and also served as pianist and music director for a jazz trio working at Boston's WNAC-TV. Upon hearing Raposo's musical skill, Schwartz claims in his autobiography he urged Raposo to give up piano bar playing in Boston and "take his ass to New York". Raposo's decision to take Schwartz's suggestion and move to New York in 1965 eventually led him to his fated meeting with Henson, to Sesame Street, and towards international fame.

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Joel Hirschhorn
Joel Hirschhorn, (December 18, 1937 – September 17, 2005), was an American songwriter. He won the Academy Award for Best Song on two occasions. He also wrote songs for a number of musicians, including Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison. Hirschhorn was born in the Bronx and attended the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan. After graduating, Hirschhorn became a regular performer on New York’s nightclub circuit, both as a solo singer and as a member of the rock & roll band, The Highlighters.
During the mid-1960s, Hirschhorn branched out into writing film soundtracks. The first score he wrote was for Who Killed Teddy Bear? (1965), which was directed by his friend Joseph Cates. He worked with Cates again the following year in The Fat Spy. However, the film was received so badly that Hirschhorn struggled to find work in Hollywood for a number of years afterwards.^{[citation needed]}
Hirschhorn, along with songwriting partner Al Kasha, did not work on another film until 1970’s The Cheyenne Social Club, which was directed by Gene Kelly. It was the pair’s next effort, for The Poseidon Adventure (1972), that really made their name. "The Morning After", a song they wrote in a single evening, won them their first Oscar and also topped the Billboard chart.

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John Bettis
John Bettis (born 24 October 1946) is an American lyricist who has co-written many famous popular songs over the years. In 2011, John was inducted into both the Songwriters Hall of Fame as well as the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
He was originally part of the band Spectrum, which also featured Richard and Karen Carpenter. He provided the lyrics for many hit songs for The Carpenters' ("Top of the World", "Only Yesterday", "Goodbye to Love" and "Yesterday Once More"), and later for other famous artists such as Madonna ("Crazy for You"), Michael Jackson ("Human Nature"), The Pointer Sisters ("Slow Hand") Diana Ross ("When You Tell Me That You Love Me"), Jennifer Warnes ("Nights Are Forever"), Peabo Bryson ("Can You Stop the Rain"), George Strait ("Heartland"), Ronnie Milsap ("Only One Love in My Life"), and Barbara Mandrell ("One Of A Kind Pair Of Fools"). Bettis also co-wrote "One Moment in Time", the 1988 Summer Olympics anthem performed by Whitney Houston, and the theme song to the 1980s sitcom Growing Pains, "As Long As We Got Each Other."

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John DeNicola
John DeNicola (born October 4, 1955) is an American songwriter and producer who, in 1988, won both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, as well as receiving a Grammy nomination for co-writing the song "(I've Had) The Time of My Life", which became the signature theme in the soundtrack of the film Dirty Dancing. In 1989 he was the co-winner of ASCAP Awards' "Most Performed Songs from Motion Pictures" for "Time of My Life" as well as for "Hungry Eyes", another song from the film. In addition to Dirty Dancing hits for Bill Medley, Jennifer Warnes and Eric Carmen, he has also written songs with and for Eddie Money, John Waite, Kristine W, Steve Holy, Jeannie Kendall, Sugar Jones, Annie Haslam, Bernie Worrell, The Sighs and Martin Briley.
A native of New York City and a longtime resident of its historic, traditionally associated with artists, neighborhood of Greenwich Village, John DeNicola began his musical career as a bass player with "Flight", a band which recorded for Motown in 1980 and was sampled by Erikah Badu on her hit song "Back in the Day". He subsequently played bass with such pop recording artists as Paul Young and Corey Hart, before concentrating on songwriting and producing.

wn.com/John_DeNicola

John Farrar

John Farrar (

/ˈfɑrər/; born on 8 November 1946 in Melbourne Australia) is a music producer, songwriter, music arranger, singer and guitarist who is best known for his work with Olivia Newton-John with whom he wrote and produced many hit songs.
Farrar is a former member of several groups including The Shadows, Marvin Welch & Farrar, The Strangers and The Mustangs. He is also the father of Phantom Planet bassist Sam Farrar as well as Golden Ghost guitarist/keyboardist Max Farrar.
Farrar began playing guitar when he was twelve, and by sixteen had begun playing with local rock bands such as The Mustangs.
Shortly after Farrar joined The Strangers, they became the house band for the popular TV music program The Go!! Show. Both Farrar's future wife, Pat Carroll, and Olivia Newton-John appeared on The Go Show as singers.
After returning from a tour with Newton-John, Carroll was obliged to return to Australia because her visa had expired, while Olivia (who was born in the UK) was able to stay on. Carroll dated and married Farrar. Following her marriage, Carroll ceased to pursue her headliner status and settled into occasionally reprising her duo work with Newton-John and back-up singing, mainly in session work for Farrar/Newton-John productions.

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John Kander
John Harold Kander (born March 18, 1927) is the American composer of a number of musicals as part of the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.
Kander was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Bernice (née Aaron) and Harold S. Kander. Kander attended The Pembroke Country-Day School and Oberlin College before earning a Master's degree at Columbia University where he was a protégé of Douglas Moore and studied composition with Jack Beeson.
Kander began his Broadway career as substitute rehearsal pianist for West Side Story. The stage manager for West Side Story then asked Kander to play the auditions for her next show, Gypsy. During the auditions, Kander met the choreographer, Jerome Robbins, who suggested that Kander compose the dance music for the show in 1959. After that experience, he wrote dance arrangements for Irma la Douce in 1960.
His first produced musical was A Family Affair, written with James and William Goldman. He met lyricist Fred Ebb in 1962 and began a songwriting collaboration that would last for more than four decades. Later that year rising star Barbra Streisand recorded two of the duo's songs, "My Coloring Book" and "I Don't Care Much." In 1965, Kander and Ebb landed their first show on Broadway, Flora the Red Menace, produced by Hal Prince, directed by George Abbott, and with book by George Abbott and Robert Russell,^{[disambiguation needed ]} in which Liza Minnelli made her initial Broadway appearance. Kander and Ebb have since been associated with writing material for both Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera, and have produced special material for their appearances live and on television.

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John Legend
John Roger Stephens (born December 28, 1978), better known by his stage name John Legend, is an American singer-songwriter and actor. He has won nine Grammy Awards, and in 2007, he received the special Starlight award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Prior to the release of his debut album, Stephens' career gained momentum through a series of successful collaborations with multiple established artists. Stephens added his voice to those of other artists, assisting in them reaching chart-topper hits. He lent his voice to Kanye West's All of the Lights, on Slum Village's "Selfish" and Dilated Peoples' "This Way". Other artists included Jay-Z's "Encore", and he sang backing vocals on Alicia Keys' 2003 song "You Don't Know My Name" and Fort Minor's "High Road." Stephens played piano on Lauryn Hill's "Everything Is Everything."
Stephens was born on December 28, 1978, in Springfield, Ohio. He is the son of Phyllis, a seamstress, and John Mills, a factory worker and former National Guardsman. Throughout his childhood, Stephens was homeschooled on and off by his mother. At the age of four, he began playing the piano and at the age of seven, he performed with his church choir. When he was ten, his parents divorced, causing his mother to suffer a breakdown. At the age of 12, Stephens attended North High School, from which he graduated four years later. He graduated salutatorian.

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John Williams
John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932) is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Hook, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, War Horse, Home Alone and the first three Harry Potter films. He has had a long association with director Steven Spielberg, composing the music for all but two (Duel and The Color Purple) of Spielberg's major feature films.
Other notable works by Williams include theme music for four Olympic Games, NBC Sunday Night Football, the NBC Nightly News, the rededication of the Statue of Liberty, and the television series Lost in Space. Williams has also composed numerous classical concerti, and he served as the principal conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra from 1980 to 1993; he is now the orchestra's conductor laureate.
Williams has won five Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, seven BAFTA Awards, and 21 Grammy Awards. With 47 Academy Award nominations, Williams is the second most nominated person, after Walt Disney. John Williams was honored with the prestigious Richard Kirk award at the 1999 BMI Film and TV Awards. The award is given annually to a composer who has made significant contributions to film and television music. Williams was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame in 2000, and was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004.

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Johnny Lange
Johnny Lange (August 15, 1905 – January 6, 2006) was a songwriter, author and publisher. He was educated in a Philadelphia high school. He joined the music staff at film studios in 1937 and resumed his film music career in 1946 and 1947. He also wrote special material for night club singers, and the "Ice Capades of 1950". Joining ASCAP in 1940, his chief musical collaborators were Archie Gottler and Jack Meskill. Lange's most popular composition was 'Mule Train' which earned him an Academy Award nomination in 1950 (it was featured in the film "Singing Guns"). Lange died in 2006, at the age of 100.

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Johnny Mandel
Johnny Mandel (November 23, 1925) is an American composer and arranger of popular songs, film music and jazz. Among the musicians he has worked with are Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Anita O'Day, Barbra Streisand, and Shirley Horn.
Born John Alfred Mandel, New York, N.Y., to Alfred, a garment manufacturer, and Hannah, an opera singer, who discovered when he was aged 5 that he had perfect pitch. Piano lessons ensued but Johnny switched to the trumpet and later the trombone. Mandel married Martha Blanner in 1970 and has a daughter, Marrisa, born in 1976.
He studied at the Manhattan School of Music and the Juilliard School. In 1943 he played the trumpet with Joe Venuti, in 1944 with Billy Rogers and trombone in the bands of Boyd Raeburn, Jimmy Dorsey, Buddy Rich, Georgie Auld and Chubby Jackson. In 1949 he accompanied the singer June Christy in the orchestra of Bob Cooper. From 1951 till 1953 he played and arranged music in Elliot Lawrence's orchestra, and in 1953 with Count Basie. Later he resided in Los Angeles, where he played the bass trumpet for Zoot Sims. A 1944 Band graduate of New York Military Academy, in Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY, he wrote jazz compositions like "Not Really the Blues" for Woody Herman in 1949, "Hershey Bar" (1950) and "Pot Luck" (1953) for Stan Getz, "Straight Life" (1953) and "Low Life" (1956) for Count Basie as well as "Tommyhawk" (1954) for Chet Baker.

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Jon Bon Jovi
Jon Bon Jovi (born John Francis Bongiovi, Jr., March 2, 1962) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and actor, best known as the founder, occasional rhythm guitarist, and lead singer of rock band Bon Jovi, which was named after him. During his career, he has released two solo albums and eleven studio albums with his band, which to date have sold over 130 million albums worldwide. Тhe band was declared the second richest band for 2011, behind U2, earning an approximate $125 million income. In addition, Jon Bon Jovi is one of the majority-owners of the Philadelphia Soul, a team playing in the Arena Football League. In 2010, President Barack Obama named Jon Bon Jovi to the White House Council for Community Solutions.
As a solo artist, Bon Jovi has received numerous awards for his work, including a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination for his solo hit, "Blaze of Glory". He was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Monmouth University in 2001. He campaigned for Al Gore in the 2000 Presidential election, John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential election, and Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential election.

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Jonas Gwangwa
Jonas Mosa Gwangwa (born 1941 in Orlando East, Soweto) has been an important figure in South African jazz for over 40 years. He first gained significance playing trombone with The Jazz Epistles. After the group broke up he continued to be important to the South African music scene and then later abroad.
In the 1960s he began to gain noticed in the United States and in 1965 he was featured in a "Sound Of Africa" concert at Carnegie Hall. The others at the concert included Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, and Letta Mbulu. Despite that he was not seen favorably by the apartheid government so left his homeland in the early 1970s
In later life he became important as a composer doing the scores of films like Cry Freedom and at the 60th Annual Academy Awards in 1988 he performed his nominated song Cry Freedom. Also in 1988 he performed at the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute in Wembley Stadium. In 1991 he returned to South Africa and in 1997 he composed the theme for their Olympic bid.
His autobiography has recently been written by acclaimed music academic Colette Szymczak.

wn.com/Jonas_Gwangwa

Jorge Calandrelli
Jorge Calandrelli is an Argentine composer, arranger and orchestrator.
His truly ingenious arranging and composing techniques, especially his beautiful string writing, makes him very well recognized on many records of today's pop - jazz/ Jazz commercial record publications.
Big record stars hired him for writing arrangements, including Barbra Streisand, Andrea Bocelli, Tony Bennett, Celine Dion, Ricky Martin, Luis Miguel, Eddie Daniels, Barry Manilow, and many others.
One of his most interesting works is the concerto for jazz clarinet and orchestra. He wrote it under the 1984 New York winter impression. With slight inflections from composers like Stravinsky and Bartók, it has 3 movements: Allegro, Adagio and Presto. Calandrelli earned for this work the "Wavedon Award" - All music composer of the year. Among others, he has been nominated for 2 Academy Awards and 22 Grammy Awards. Other credits include The Shining (1980, uncredited orchestrator), Tron (1982, orchestrator), The Color Purple (1985, adapttor and orchestrator), and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, composer, music producer).

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Jorge Drexler
Jorge Drexler (born Jorge Abner Drexler Prada; September 21, 1964) is an Uruguayan musician, actor, and doctor specialized on otolaryngology.
In 2004 Drexler won wide acclaim after becoming the first Uruguayan ever to win an Academy Award. He won for composing the song "Al Otro Lado del Río" from The Motorcycle Diaries.
Drexler was born in Montevideo. His father, a German Jew, fled to Uruguay with his family at the age of four to escape the Holocaust. His mother is a Christian of mixed Spanish, French and Portuguese descent. Drexler was raised Jewish, but embraces Christian tradition as well.
Like much of his family, he studied medicine and became an otolaryngologist ear, nose and throat specialist. Drexler began playing piano at age five, before attending guitar and composition classes. Although he had an interest in music, he became a doctor like both of his parents. He attended medical school in Montevideo. During his time in medical school, Drexler took a break to hitchhike through Brazil.

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Josef Myrow
Josef Myrow (1910 – 1987) was a Russian-born composer known for his work in film scores in the 1940s and 50s. He was nominated for an Academy Award twice: in 1947 for the song "You Do" from the film Mother Wore Tights and in 1950 for "Wilhelmina" from the film Wabash Avenue. Other notable compositions include "Autumn Nocturne" and "You Make Me Feel So Young".
He also wrote the official song of the Civil Air Patrol, the United States Air Force Auxiliary.

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Josh Groban
Joshua Winslow "Josh" Groban (born February 27, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, actor, and record producer. His first four solo albums have been certified multi-platinum, and in 2007, he was charted as the number-one best selling artist in the United States with over 21 million records in that country. To date, he has sold over 24 million albums worldwide, and is the top selling classical artist of the 2000s in the US, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Groban originally studied acting, but as his voice changed, it developed into a "significant instrument". Groban attended the Los Angeles High School for the Arts, a free public school where students received a conservatory-style education. His life changed when his vocal coach, Seth Riggs, submitted a tape of Josh singing "All I Ask of You", from The Phantom of the Opera, to Riggs' friend, producer, composer and arranger David Foster. Foster called him to stand in for an ailing Andrea Bocelli to rehearse a duet, "The Prayer," with Celine Dion at the rehearsal for the Grammy Awards in 1998.Rosie O'Donnell immediately invited him to appear on her talk show. Foster asked him to sing at the California Governor's Gray Davis' 1999 inauguration. He was cast on Ally McBeal by the show's creator, David E. Kelley, performing "You're Still You" for the 2001 season finale.

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Juicy J
Jordan Houston, better known by his stage name Juicy J (born April 5, 1977) is an Academy Award-winning American rapper and record producer from Memphis, Tennessee and is the co-founder and a member of the duo Three 6 Mafia (formerly known as Triple Six Mafia). He is also the younger brother of fellow member, Project Pat. His second solo album, Hustle Till I Die, was released June 16, 2009. He won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "It's Hard out Here for a Pimp". In December 2011 Juicy J confirmed rumors that he was the newest member of Wiz Khalifa's "Taylor Gang." He is featured with other members of Taylor Gang on the cover of Source Magazine's May 2012 issue.
Juicy J is most notable for his crunk style of rapping, highlighted by his patented "heavy-breathing" and "stomping" background sound effects. Juicy J's production style is characterized by fast-rolling high hats, sharp snares, and deep cinematic bass. He also incorporates samples from classic soul artists such as Willie Hutch, David Ruffin, and Isaac Hayes.

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Jule Styne
Jule Styne (December 31, 1905 – September 20, 1994) was a British-born American songwriter especially famous for a series of Broadway musicals, which included several very well known and frequently revived shows.
Styne was born in London, England as Julius Kerwin Stein of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. At the age of eight he moved with his family to Chicago, where at an early age he began taking piano lessons. He proved to be a prodigy and performed with the Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit Symphonies before he was ten years old.
Styne attended Chicago Musical College, but before then he had already attracted attention of another teenager, Mike Todd, later a successful film producer, who commissioned him to write a song for a musical act that he was creating. It would be the first of over 1,500 published songs Styne would compose in his career.
Styne established his own dance band, which brought him to the notice of Hollywood, where he was championed by Frank Sinatra and where he began a collaboration with lyricist Sammy Cahn, with whom he wrote many songs for the movies, including "It's Been a Long, Long Time" (#1 for 3 weeks for Harry James and His Orchestra in 1945), "Five Minutes More," and the Oscar-winning "Three Coins in the Fountain". He collaborated on the score for the 1955 musical film My Sister Eileen with Leo Robin. Ten of his songs were nominated for the Oscar, many written with Cahn, including "I've Heard That Song Before" (#1 for 13 weeks for Harry James and His Orchestra in 1943), "I'll Walk Alone", "It's Magic" (a #2 hit for Doris Day in 1948) and "I Fall in Love Too Easily".

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Julie Taymor
Julie Taymor (born December 15, 1952) is an American director of theater, opera and film. Taymor's work has received many accolades from critics, and she has earned two Tony Awards out of four nominations, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design, an Emmy Award and an Academy Award nomination for Original Song. She is widely known for directing the stage musical, The Lion King, for which she became the first woman to win the Tony Award for directing a musical, in addition to a Tony Award for Original Costume Design. She was the director of the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark but left in March 2011, following artistic differences with the producers.
Taymor was born in Newton, Massachusetts, the daughter of Elizabeth (née Bernstein), a political science teacher, and Melvin Lester Taymor, a gynecologist. Taymor's interest in theatre took root early in her life. At the age of seven, she was already drawing her sister into stagings of children's stories for her parents. By age nine, she was entranced by the Boston Children's Theatre and became involved with them. Being the youngest member of theatre groups became common. By 11, she was taking trips to Boston by herself every weekend, where she discovered Julie Portman's Theatre Workshop. At the age of 13, her parents sent her to both Sri Lanka and India with the Experiment in International Living. After graduating High School at 16, Taymor went to Paris to study with L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. Her studies there exposed her to mime, which helped develop her physical sensibilities. While in Paris, Taymor also worked with masks for the first time and immersed herself in film, especially the work of Fellini and Kurosawa.

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Kathleen York
Kathleen "Bird" York is an actress, screenwriter and Oscar nominated songwriter-recording artist.
York achieved global recognition with her song "In the Deep", (co-written with Michael Becker) which appears on her album Wicked Little High and was written for the 2004 film Crash. "In the Deep" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song with York performing the song live at the 78th Academy Awards in 2006.
As an actress, York has starred in over a hundred film and television projects. Credits include six seasons of the multi Emmy Award winning series The West Wing as Andrea Wyatt, Northern Lights with Diane Keaton, "Cold Feet" with Tom Waits, "A Season In Purgatory" opposite Patrick Dempsey, Charles Burnett's "Nightjohn" and Oscar winner Crash. York starred as a young Naomi Judd in Love Can Build a Bridge, the four hour NBC miniseries about Judd's life. Independent film credits include Cries of Silence, The Big Day, Ball Don't Lie. York was a series regular in the ABC series Vengeance Unlimited as well as Aaron's Way for NBC. Recurring roles include Stephen Bochco's Murder One, The O.C and Desperate Housewives. She appeared on the cult hit Curb Your Enthusiasm in the show's second season and is a series regular in Sony Television's drama The Client List.

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Kathryn Grayson
Kathryn Grayson (February 9, 1922 - February 17, 2010) was an American actress and operatic soprano singer.
From the age of twelve, Grayson trained as an opera singer. She was under contract to MGM by the early 1940s, soon establishing a career principally through her work in musicals. After several supporting roles, she was a lead performer in such films as Thousands Cheer (1943), Anchors Aweigh (1945) with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, and Show Boat (1951) and Kiss Me Kate (1953) (both with Howard Keel).
When film musical production declined, she worked in theatre, appearing in Camelot (1962–1964). Later in the decade she performed in several operas, including La bohème, Madama Butterfly, Orpheus in the Underworld and La traviata.
She was born Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the daughter of Charles E. Hedrick and Lillian Grayson Hedrick (1897–1955). Charles was a building contractor-realtor.
Lillian was of British descent and Charles was of German and Sicilian descent.

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Keith Carradine
Keith Ian Carradine (born August 8, 1949) is an American actor who has had success on stage, film and television. He is perhaps best known for his roles as Wild Bill Hickok in the HBO series Deadwood and FBI agent Frank Lundy in Dexter. In addition, he is a Golden Globe and Academy Award winning songwriter. As a member of the Carradine family, he is part of an acting "dynasty" that began with his father, John Carradine.
Keith Carradine was born in San Mateo, California. He is the son of actress and artist Sonia Sorel (née Henius) and actor John Carradine. His paternal half-brothers are Bruce and David Carradine. His maternal half-brother is Michael Bowen, and his full brothers are Christopher and Robert Carradine. His maternal great-grandfather was biochemist Max Henius, and his maternal great-grandmother was the sister of historian Johan Ludvig Heiberg.
Carradine's childhood was difficult. He said that his father drank and his mother “was a manic depressive paranoid schizophrenic catatonic — she had it all.” His parents were divorced in 1957, when he was eight years old. A bitter custody battle led to his father gaining custody of him and his brothers, Christopher and Robert, after the children had spent three months in a home for abused children as wards of the court. Keith said of the experience, "It was like being in jail. There were bars on the windows, and we were only allowed to see our parents through glass doors. It was very sad. We would stand there on either side of the glass door crying." He was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother, and he rarely saw either of his parents. His mother was not permitted to see him for eight years following the custody settlement.

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Keith Forsey
Keith Forsey (born 2 January 1948, in London) is an English soundtrack composer,drummer, songwriter and record producer.
Forsey's first recordings were as the younger member of the group The Spectrum, better known for the end title theme for Gerry Anderson's Captain Scarlet, but hit makers across Europe in their own right, scoring hits in Germany and Spain on RCA Victor Records.
As drummer and long-time associate of producer Giorgio Moroder, Forsey can be heard on several albums of Donna Summer before 1981. He co-wrote several songs on the albums Bad Girls, The Wanderer and I'm a Rainbow. Forsey also formed a dance band called TRAX with Moroder's co-producer Pete Bellotte and produced two dance albums.
Forsey's drum sound was the mainstay of many Moroder productions during the 1970s including Sparks' album No. 1 in Heaven, Get on the Funk Train by Munich Machine (Moroder/Bellotte's house band), as well as various other studio/disco acts based in Munich at this time such as Boney M.. He also played on Moroder's Son of My Father, along with the as yet undiscovered, Donna Summer.

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Kenneth Ascher
Kenneth "Kenny" Lee Ascher (born October 26, 1944 in Washington, D.C.) is an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger who is active in jazz, rock, classical, and musical theater genres — in live venues, recording studios, and cinema production. He is widely known for co-writing, with Paul Williams, The Rainbow Connection — music from The Muppet Movie. Both Williams and Ascher received Oscar nominations for the 1979 Academy Awards for Best Original Song ("Rainbow Connection") and Best Original Score (The Muppet Movie Soundtrack). The song was also nominated for the Golden Globes for "Best Original Song" that same year.
Ascher's work through the years has included keyboard parts and string arrangements on John Lennon's albums Mind Games, Walls and Bridges and Rock 'n' Roll and Yoko Ono's A Story, music for several songs from Barbra Streisand's remake of A Star Is Born (where he also served as music coordinator), and arrangements for portions of Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf's masterpiece, Bat out of Hell (produced by Todd Rundgren). Ascher's own rendition of The Rainbow Connection was featured in the closing credits of The Break-Up (starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston). Ascher is the pianist with the Birdland Big Band, which performs Fridays from 5:15 to 7 at Birdland in New York City. The Birdland Big Band performs The Rainbow Connection, arranged by Lew Anderson.

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Kenny Loggins
Kenneth Clark "Kenny" Loggins (born January 7, 1948) is an American singer and songwriter. He is known for soft rock music beginning during the 1970s, and later for writing and performing for movie soundtracks in the 1980s. Originally a part of the duo Loggins and Messina, he became a solo artist and has written songs for other artists.
Loggins (born in Everett, Washington) is the youngest of three brothers. His mother was Lina (Massie), a stay-at-home mom, and his father, Robert George Loggins, was a salesman. They lived in Detroit and Seattle before settling in Alhambra, California. Loggins attended San Gabriel Mission High School^{[citation needed]}, graduating in 1966. He formed a band called the Second Helping, that released three singles during 1968 and 1969 on Viva Records. Greg Shaw described the efforts as "excellent punky folk-pop records" that were written by Loggins who was likely to be the bandleader and singer as well; Shaw included "Let Me In" on both Highs in the Mid-Sixties, Volume 2 and the Pebbles, Volume 9 CD. Loggins had a short gig playing guitar for the "The New Improved" Electric Prunes in 1969 before writing four songs for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, which were included in their Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy album. During his early twenties, he was part of the band Gator Creek with Mike Deasy. An early version of "Danny's Song" (later recorded by Loggins and Messina) was included in a record on Mercury Records.

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Kim Gannon
James Kimball "Kim" Gannon (November 18, 1900 – April 29, 1974) was an American songwriter, more commonly a lyricist than a composer. He was born in Brooklyn, New York but grew up in New Jersey where he attended Montclair High School and was a member of The Omega Gamma Delta Fraternity. He graduated from St. Lawrence University and, intending to become a lawyer, attended the Albany Law School, passing the bar examination in New York State in 1934.
In 1939 he wrote his first song, "For Tonight." His 1942 song, Moonlight Cocktail, was recorded by the Glenn Miller Orchestra and was the best selling record in the United States for 10 weeks. In 1942 he began writing songs for films, beginning with the lyrics of the title song for Always in My Heart. He subsequently contributed songs to other films, including Powers Girl and If Winter Comes. In 1951 he turned to the Broadway stage, joining with composer Walter Kent to write the score for Seventeen.
He died in Lake Worth, Florida, at the age of 73.

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Kristin Chenoweth
Kristin Chenoweth (born July 24, 1968) is an American singer and actress, with credits in musical theatre, film and television. She is best known on Broadway for her performance as Sally Brown in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1999), for which she won a Tony Award, and for originating the role of Glinda in the musical Wicked (2003). Her best-known television role is Annabeth Schott in NBC's The West Wing. As Olive Snook on the ABC comedy-drama Pushing Daisies, she won a 2009 Emmy Award. Chenoweth stars in the ABC TV series GCB, which premiered in March 2012.
An Oklahoma native, Chenoweth sang gospel music as a child and studied opera before deciding to pursue a career in musical theatre. In 1997, she made her Broadway debut in Steel Pier. Besides You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and Wicked, Chenoweth's stage work includes five City Center Encores! productions, Broadway's The Apple Tree in 2006 and Promises, Promises in 2010, as well as Off-Broadway and regional theatre productions.
Chenoweth had her own TV series Kristin in 2001, and has guest starred on many shows, including Sesame Street and Glee, for which she was nominated for Emmy awards in 2010 and 2011. In films, she has played mostly character roles, such as in Bewitched (2005), The Pink Panther (2006) and RV (2006). She has also played roles in made-for-TV movies, done voice work in animated films and the animated TV series Sit Down, Shut Up, hosted several award shows and released several albums of songs, including A Lovely Way to Spend Christmas (2008) and Some Lessons Learned (2011). Chenoweth also penned a 2009 memoir, A Little Bit Wicked: Life, Love, and Faith in Stages.

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Lalo Schifrin
Lalo Schifrin (born June 21, 1932) is an Argentine composer, pianist and conductor. He is best known for his film and TV scores, such as the "Theme from Mission: Impossible". He has received four Grammy Awards and six Oscar nominations. Schifrin, associated with the jazz music genre, is also noted for work with Clint Eastwood in the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, particularly the Dirty Harry films.
Schifrin was born Boris Claudio Schifrin in Buenos Aires to Jewish parents. His father, Luis Schifrin, led the second violin section of the orchestra at the Teatro Colón for three decades. At the age of six, Schifrin began a six-year course of study on piano with Enrique Barenboim, the father of the pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim. At age 16, Schifrin began studying piano with the Greek-Russian expatriate Andreas Karalis, former head of the Kiev Conservatory, and harmony with Argentine composer Juan Carlos Paz. During this time, Schifrin also became interested in jazz.
Although Schifrin studied sociology and law at the University of Buenos Aires, it was music that captured his attention. At age 20, he successfully applied for a scholarship to the Paris Conservatoire. While there, he attended Olivier Messiaen's classes and formally studied with Charles Koechlin, a disciple of Maurice Ravel. At night he played jazz in the Paris clubs. In 1955, Schifrin played piano with Ástor Piazzolla and represented his country at the International Jazz Festival in Paris.

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Lamont Dozier
Lamont Herbert Dozier (born June 16, 1941) is an American songwriter and record producer, born in Detroit, Michigan. Dozier has either co-written or produced several US Billboard #1 hits.
Dozier is best known as a member of Holland–Dozier–Holland, the songwriting and production team that was responsible for much of the Motown sound and numerous hit records by artists such as Martha & the Vandellas, The Supremes, The Four Tops, and The Isley Brothers. Along with Brian Holland, Dozier served as the team's musical arranger and producer. After H-D-H left Motown in 1967 to form the Invictus/Hot Wax labels, Dozier began recording as an artist on their labels. Dozier departed from H-D-H in the mid-1970s, and was replaced by new arranger/producer Harold Beatty.
Dozier had another #1 hit as a songwriter in the 1980s, combining with Phil Collins to write the song "Two Hearts" from the movie soundtrack for Buster. "Two Hearts" was nominated for an Oscar for Best Song. Collins and Dozier also co-wrote "Loco in Acapulco" for The Four Tops, which is also featured on the Buster soundtrack.

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Larry Mullen Jr.
Lawrence Joseph "Larry" Mullen, Jr. (born 31 October 1961) is an Irish musician best known as the drummer for the Irish rock band U2. He is the founder of U2, which he later described as "'The Larry Mullen Band' for about ten minutes, then Bono walked in and blew any chance I had of being in charge." He has worked on numerous side projects during his career, including a collaboration with Michael Stipe and Mike Mills of R.E.M. to form Automatic Baby in 1993 and working with bandmate Adam Clayton on the re-recording of the theme to Mission: Impossible, in 1996. He and U2 have won many awards, including 22 Grammy awards.
Mullen, the middle child and only son of Larry and Maureen Mullen, was born 31 October 1961 in Artane, Dublin, Ireland. Mullen began drumming in 1970, at the age of 9, under the instruction of Irish drummer Joe Bonnie and, later, Bonnie's daughter Monica. His mother died in a car accident in November 1978, two years after U2 was founded.

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Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier (Danish pronunciation: [ˈlɑːs fʌn ˈtʁiːˀɐ]; born Lars Trier; 30 April 1956) is a Danish film director and screenwriter. He is closely associated with the Dogme 95 collective – an avant-garde filmmaking movement – although his own films have taken a variety of approaches. His work has frequently divided the critics.

Von Trier began making films at the age of eleven. Raised by a communist mother and a socialist father in an austere environment, he converted at the age of 30 to the Catholic Church. Von Trier suffers periodically from depression, as well as various fears and phobias, including an intense fear of flying. As he himself said in an interview, "Basically, I'm afraid of everything in life, except filmmaking".. His first publicly released film was an experimental short called The Orchid Gardener (1977) and his first feature film came seven years later with The Element of Crime (1984). Among many other prizes, awards and nominations, he is the recipient of the Palme d'Or, the Grand Prix, and the Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

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Leigh Harline
Leigh Adrian Harline (March 26, 1907 – December 10, 1969) was a film composer.
Leigh Harline was the youngest of 13 children. His parents, soldier Charles Härlin and his wife Johanna Matilda, came from the village Härfsta in Simtuna parish in 1891, Sweden. They had become Mormons and wanted to move to Salt Lake City in Utah. In the U.S. they changed their surname to Harline.
Harline's parents joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1888. Harline was baptized a member of the LDS Church at age eight.
Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, he worked for various radio stations before joining the Walt Disney studios in 1932 as arranger and scorer. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Music Score and the Academy Award for Best Original Song (for "When You Wish Upon a Star") for Disney's Pinocchio (1940). The tune later become the theme for Disney's TV series The Wonderful World of Disney.
A graduate of the University of Utah, Harline was a musical director for local Los Angeles radio when he was hired by Walt Disney to score the Silly Symphonies cartoon series in the 1930s. Together with Frank Churchill, Larry Morey, and Paul J. Smith, Harline was responsible for such Disney-film tunes as "I'm Wishing", "Whistle While You Work", "Heigh-Ho", and "Some Day My Prince Will Come".

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Leith Stevens
Leith Stevens (September 13, 1909 – July 23, 1970) was an American composer for radio and film scores.
Born in Mount Moriah, Missouri, he was a child prodigy who was an accompanist for Madame Schumann-Heink.
During World War II, he was radio director for the Southwest Pacific Area with the Office of War Information. He was musical director of the War Production Board (WPB) series Three Thirds of a Nation, presented Wednesdays over the Blue Network.
Leith Stevens was born in Mount Moriah, Missouri on September 13, 1909 and died in Los Angeles, California on July 23, 1970 at age 60 from a heart attack he suffered after learning that his wife had died in a car crash.
The music accompanying the film The James Dean Story was composed and conducted by Leith Stevens. An eponymous album containing this music was released by Capitol Records in 1957, the anonymous sleeve notes of which are worth quoting verbatim:

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Leo McCarey
Thomas Leo McCarey (October 3, 1898 – July 5, 1969) was an American film director, screenwriter and producer. During his lifetime he was involved in nearly 200 movies, especially comedies. French director Jean Renoir once said that "Leo McCarey understood people better than any other Hollywood director."
Born in Los Angeles, California, he graduated from the University of Southern California law school and began in the movie business as an assistant director to Tod Browning in 1920, but honed his skills at the Hal Roach Studios for the rest of that decade. Hired by Hal Roach in 1923, McCarey initially wrote gags for the Our Gang series and other studio stars, then produced and directed shorts, including two-reelers with Charley Chase. While at Roach, McCarey cast Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy together and guided development of their onscreen characters, thus creating one of the most enduring comedy teams of all time. He only officially appeared as director of the duo shorts We Faw Down (1928), Liberty (1929) and Wrong Again (1929), but wrote many of the screenplays. By 1929, he was vice-president of production for the entire studio.

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Leslie Bricusse
Leslie Bricusse (born 29 January 1931) is an English composer, lyricist, and playwright.
Although best known for his partnership with Anthony Newley, Bricusse has worked with many other composers. He was educated at University College School in London and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge University, he was Secretary of Footlights between 1952 and 1953 and Footlights President during the following year. He currently lives in California in the United States, and he is married to the actress Yvonne Romain.
Sammy Davis, Jr. had hits with two of Bricusse's songs - "What Kind of Fool Am I?" (from Stop the World - I Want to Get Off) and the #1 hit "The Candy Man" (from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory). Other recording artists who have had popular success with his songs include Matt Monro and Frank Sinatra ("My Kind of Girl"), Shirley Bassey ("Goldfinger"), Harry Secombe ("If I Ruled the World"), Nancy Sinatra ("You Only Live Twice"), Maureen McGovern ("Can You Read My Mind"), and Diana Krall ("When I Look in Your Eyes"). Bricusse also partnered with George Tipton to write the opening theme of the U.S. television series It's a Living.

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Lew Brown
Lew Brown (December 10, 1893 – February 5, 1958) was a lyricist for popular songs in the United States.
Brown was born as Louis Brownstein in Odessa, Russian Empire. His family emigrated to the United States in 1898 and settled in The Bronx of New York City.
Brown wrote lyrics for many of the top Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the day, including Albert Von Tilzer, Con Conrad, and Harold Arlen. He was one third of a successful songwriting and music publishing team with Ray Henderson and Buddy De Sylva from 1925 until 1929. Brown also wrote or co-wrote several Broadway shows.
Lew Brown died in New York City.
Posthumous Credits

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Lew Pollack
Lew Pollack (16 June 1895 – 18 January 1946) was a song composer active during the 1920s and the 1930s.
Pollack was born in New York. Among his best known songs are "Charmaine" and "Diane" with Ernö Rapée, "Miss Annabelle Lee", "Two Cigarettes in the Dark", "At the Codfish Ball" (from the Shirley Temple movie "Captain January" with Buddy Edsen), and Go In and Out The Window, now a children's music standard. He also collaborated with Paul Francis Webster, Sidney Clare, Ned Washington and Jack Yellen, amongst others. In 1914 he wrote "That's a Plenty", a rag that became an enduring Dixieland standard. He died in Hollywood.
Lew Pollack was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.

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Lionel Newman
Lionel Newman (January 4, 1916 - February 3, 1989) was an American conductor, pianist, and film and television composer. He was the brother of Alfred Newman and Emil Newman, uncle of Randy Newman, David Newman and Thomas Newman, and grandfather of Joey Newman.
Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Newman was one of ten children, the youngest of seven boys, born to Russian immigrant Jewish parents. While the family had little money, the children's mother, Luba, was a strong woman who encouraged them to achieve. Newman migrated to Hollywood where, at the age of 16, he began conducting for impresario Earl Carroll. This was where he met his future wife, Beverly Carroll, an Earl Carroll Vanity’s showgirl, and niece of the impresario. Newman had formal training in New York, and after moving to Los Angeles, he continued his studies with Joseph Achron and Mario Castelnuevo-Tedesco.
In the 1930s, Newman earned his stripes conducting national tours and working as the piano accompanist for Mae West. She used to scold him for holding his hands too high in the pit saying, "I'm the show, Newman, not you."

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Louis Alter
Louis Alter (June 18, 1902, Haverhill, Massachusetts – November 5, 1980, New York City, New York) was an American pianist, songwriter and composer. Alter was 13 when he began playing piano in theaters showing silent films. He studied at the New England Conservatory of Music under the tutelage of Stuart Mason.
Alter played in vaudeville houses as the accompanist for headliners Irène Bordoni and Nora Bayes. He appeared with Bayes from 1924 until her death in 1928, touring the United States and abroad. Since he had previously written some songs for Broadway shows, Alter decided to concentrate on songwriting after Bayes' death. His first hit was "Manhattan Serenade" (1929), originally an instrumental that later became the theme music of the Easy Aces radio program. There are numerous recordings of "Manhattan Serenade," and it was featured prominently in Nancy Groce's book, New York: Songs of the City (Watson-Guptill, 1999). Alter recalled:
In 1929, Alter moved to Hollywood, where he wrote songs for films, beginning with The Hollywood Review of 1929, and he continued to provide piano accompaniment for various singers, including Beatrice Lillie and Helen Morgan. His contributions to Broadway musicals included songs in Sweet and Low (1930) and Ballyhoo (1931).

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Lynn Ahrens
Lynn Ahrens (born October 1, 1948) is an American writer and lyricist for the musical theatre, television and film. She has collaborated with Stephen Flaherty for many years. She won the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award for the Broadway musical Ragtime and was nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for the animated Twentieth Century Fox film "Anastasia." She is a mainstay writer for ABC-TV's "Schoolhouse Rock."
Ahrens was born in New York City, graduated from Neptune High School on the Jersey shore, and graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in Journalism and English. She is Jewish. She began a career in advertising as a copywriter but was invited to work on a children's television show, and began writing songs for "Schoolhouse Rock". She subsequently worked as a freelance composer and singer of commercial music, and wrote and produced shows for children's television. She began writing for the musical theater in 1982.
Ahrens met Stephen Flaherty at the BMI Workshop in 1982 and they started working together the following year. Their first musical together was Lucky Stiff, which premiered Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in April 1988. Their next musical was Once on This Island, which premiered on Broadway in 1990 and which was nominated for eight Tony Awards. My Favorite Year opened at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre in Lincoln Center in October 1992 but ran for only 36 performances.

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Mack David
Mack David (July 5, 1912 – December 30, 1993) was an American lyricist and songwriter, best known for his work in film and television, with a career spanning from the early 1940s through the early 1970s. Mack was credited with writing lyrics and/or music for over one thousand songs. He was particularly well known for his work on the Disney films Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland, and for the mostly-English lyrics through which Édith Piaf's signature song "La Vie en rose" gained much of its familiarity among native speakers of English.
Mack David was the elder brother of American lyricist and songwriter, Hal David. Mack David died in 1993 in his Rancho Mirage, California home and his remains are buried at the Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

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Mack Gordon
Mack Gordon (born Morris Gittler, June 21, 1904 – March 1, 1959) was an American composer and lyricist of songs for the stage and film. He was nominated for the best original song Oscar nine times, including six consecutive years between 1940 and 1945, and won the award once, for "You'll Never Know". That song has proved amongst his most enduring and remains popular in films and television commercials to this day. "At Last" is another of his best-known songs.
Gordon was born in Warsaw and moved to New York City as a child. He appeared as a vaudeville actor and singer in the late 1920s and early 1930s but his songwriting talents were always paramount. He formed a partnership with English pianist Harry Revel that lasted throughout the 1930s. In the 1940s he worked with a string of other composers including Harry Warren.
The Internet Movie Database states that Gordon's songs have been used in the soundtrack of over 100 films, Gordon writing specifically for at least 50 of them. His catalogue includes more than 120 songs sung by some of the world's most famous and talented performers such as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Etta James, Glenn Miller, Barbra Streisand, Christina Aguilera, Mel Tormé, Nat King Cole, and many more. His friendship with many of his artists (such as Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack) and his ability to write lyrics that were timeless allowed him to become a famous member of the world of music and a renowned lyricist. Thus there is perhaps no surprise that his exhibit in the Songwriters Hall of Fame says he is "arguably one of the most successful lyricists to write for the screen". He was entombed in Corridor of Immortality at Home of Peace Cemetery.

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Manos Hatzidakis
Manos Hatzidakis (Greek: Μάνος Χατζιδάκις) (October 23, 1925 – June 15, 1994) was a Greek composer and theorist of the Greek music. He was also one of the main prime movers of the "Éntekhno" song (along with Mikis Theodorakis). In 1960 he received an Academy Award for Best Original Song for his Song Never on Sunday from the self-titled movie.
His very first work was the tune for the song "Paper Moon" ("Χάρτινο το Φεγγαράκι"), from Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire staged by Karolos Koun's Art Theatre of Athens, a collaboration which continued for 15 years. His first piano piece, "For a Small White Seashell" ("Για μια Μικρή Λευκή Αχιβάδα"), came out in 1947 and in 1948 he shook the musical establishment by delivering his legendary lecture on rembetika, the urban folk songs that flourished in Greek cities, mainly Piraeus, after the Asia Minor refugee influx in 1922 and until then had heavy underworld and cannabis use connections and were consequently looked down upon.^{[citation needed]} Hatzidakis focused on the economy of expression, the deep traditional roots and the genuineness of emotion displayed in rembetika, and exalted the likes of composers like Markos Vamvakaris and Vassilis Tsitsanis. Putting theory to practice, he adapted classic rembetika in his 1951 piano work, Six Folk Paintings (Έξι Λαϊκές Ζωγραφιές), which was later also presented as a folk ballet. In 1949 he co-founded the Greek Dance Theatre Company with the choreographer Rallou Manou.

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Marc Shaiman
Marc Shaiman (born October 22, 1959) is a Tony, Grammy, Emmy winning and Oscar nominated American composer, lyricist, arranger, and performer for films, television, and theatre. He is perhaps best known for writing the music and co-writing the lyrics for the Broadway musical version of the cult John Waters film Hairspray.
Shaiman was born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Claire (née Goldfein) and William Robert Shaiman. He went to Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School. He lives in both Los Angeles and New York City. Shaiman and Scott Wittman have been partners in life and collaborators in theater since 1979.
Shaiman started his career as a theatre/cabaret musical director. He then became vocal arranger for Bette Midler, eventually becoming her musical director and co-producer of many of her recordings, including The Wind Beneath My Wings and From a Distance. He helped create the material for her performance on the penultimate Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. His work with both Bette Midler and Billy Crystal led to his involvement on their films.

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Markéta Irglová
Markéta Irglová (Czech pronunciation: [ˈmarkɛːta ˈɪrɡlovaː]) (born 28 February 1988, in Valašské Meziříčí, Czech Republic) is a Czech singer-songwriter, musician and actress.
Irglová began taking piano lessons at age 8 and began playing the guitar at age 9.^{[citation needed]}
Irglová is a member of the band The Swell Season with Glen Hansard. The band released its eponymous album on Overcoat Recordings in 2006. In 2007, Irglova co-starred in the indie movie Once. Irglová co-wrote most of the songs for the film including "Falling Slowly," which received an Academy Award for Best Original Song. The movie won the World Cinema Audience Award for a dramatic film at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Irglová appeared on the 2007 I'm Not There soundtrack with the Swell Season's version of Bob Dylan's "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere".
She began a relationship with Hansard during the making of the film Once. She ended her romantic relationship with Hansard in 2009 and in June 2011, married sound engineer, Tim Iseler The couple lives together in New York City.

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Marvin Hamlisch
Marvin Frederick Hamlisch (born June 2, 1944) is an American composer. He is one of only eleven people to have been awarded Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, and a Tony. He is also one of only two people to have won those four prizes and also a Pulitzer Prize (the other is Richard Rodgers). Hamlisch has also won two Golden Globes.
Hamlisch was born in New York City to Viennese Jewish parents: Lilly Schachter and Max Hamlisch. His father was an accordionist and bandleader. Hamlisch was a child prodigy, and by age five he began mimicking music he heard on the radio on the piano. A few months before he turned seven, in 1951, he was accepted into what is now the Juilliard School Pre-College Division. His first job was as a rehearsal pianist for Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand. Shortly after that, he was hired by producer Sam Spiegel to play piano at Spiegel's parties. This connection led to his first film score, The Swimmer. His favorite musicals growing up were My Fair Lady, Gypsy, West Side Story, and Bye Bye Birdie.

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Mary Kay Bergman
Mary Kay Bergman (June 5, 1961 – November 11, 1999) was an American voice actress and animation voice over teacher, who was the lead female voice actress on South Park from the show's 1997 debut until her death and was best known as the official voice of Snow White for the Walt Disney Company starting in 1989.
Bergman was born to Jewish parents in Los Angeles, California, growing up on North Gower Street around the corner from the home of Adriana Caselotti, the original voice of Snow White. At an early age, she found herself drawn to fantasy entertainment ranging from science fiction to anything Disney. She was always proud of the fact that as a child she and her mother wrote letters to NBC to help keep the original Star Trek on the air for a third season. With regard to Disney, she regularly visited Disneyland and was once quoted as saying, "My one regret is that I never got to meet Walt Disney."
Bergman was known for voicing most of the female characters for South Park and the 1999 feature film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. Her characters included Liane Cartman, Sheila Broflovski, Shelly Marsh, Sharon Marsh, Mrs. McCormick and Wendy Testaburger. Originally, Bergman was credited on South Park as Shannen Cassidy out of concerns regarding possible conflicts with her continued work as Disney's official Snow White voice. The South Park episode "Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics" was dedicated to her, as was the episode "Starvin' Marvin in Space," the first episode to air after her death.

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Maurice Jarre
Maurice-Alexis Jarre (13 September 1924 – 28 March 2009) was a French composer and conductor. His son is the electronic composer Jean Michel Jarre.
Although he composed several concert works, Jarre is best known for his film scores, particularly for his collaborations with film director David Lean. Jarre composed the scores to all of Lean's films since Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Other notable scores include The Train (1964), Mohammad, Messenger of God (1976), Witness (1985) and Ghost (1990).
Jarre was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Three of his compositions spent a total of 42 weeks on the UK singles chart chart; the biggest hit was "Somewhere My Love" (to his tune "Lara's Theme", with lyrics by Paul Francis Webster) by the Michael Sammes Singers, which reached Number 14 in 1966 and spent 38 weeks on the chart.
Jarre was a three time Academy Award winner, for Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and A Passage to India (1984), all of which were directed by David Lean. He was Oscar nominated a total of eight times.

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Maury Yeston
Maury Yeston (born October 23, 1945) is an American composer, lyricist, educator and musicologist.
He is known for writing the music and lyrics to Broadway musicals, including Nine in 1982, and Titanic in 1997, both of which won Tony Awards for best musical and best score. He also won a Drama Desk Award for Nine. Yeston also wrote a significant amount of the music and most of the lyrics to the Tony-nominated musical Grand Hotel in 1989, which was nominated for best score. His musical version of the novel The Phantom of the Opera called Phantom (not to be confused with Andrew Lloyd Webber's version) has enjoyed numerous productions in the U.S. and around the world. He has also written a number of other Off-Broadway musicals, a song cycle, a Cello Concerto, and other pieces.
Yeston serves on the Board of the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He is also President of the Kleban Foundation, serves on the editorial boards of Musical Quarterly and the Kurt Weill Foundation Publication Project and on the advisory board of the Yale University Press Broadway Series. He was the Director of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop in New York City for two decades beginning in 1982.

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Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks (born Melvin Kaminsky; June 28, 1926) is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows. He became well known as part of the comedy duo with Carl Reiner, The 2000 Year Old Man. In middle age he became one of the most successful film directors of the 1970s, with many of his films being among the top ten money makers of the year that they were released. His most well known films include The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, History of the World, Part I and Spaceballs. More recently he has had a smash hit on Broadway with the musical adaptation of his first film, The Producers. He was married to the actress Anne Bancroft from 1964 until her death in 2005.
Brooks is a member of the short list of entertainers with the distinction of having won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony award. Three of his films ranked in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 comedy films of all-time: Blazing Saddles at number 6, The Producers at number 11, and Young Frankenstein at number 13.

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Melina Mercouri
Melina Mercouri (Greek: Μελίνα Μερκούρη), born as Maria Amalia Mercouri (18 October 1920 – 6 March 1994) was a Greek actress, singer and politician.
As an actress she made her film debut in Stella (1955) and met international success with her performances in Never on Sunday, Phaedra, Topkapi and Promise at Dawn. She won the award for Best Actress at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival, and she was also nominated for an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and two BAFTA Awards.
A political activist during the Greek military junta of 1967–1974, she became a member of the Hellenic Parliament in 1977 and the first female Minister for Culture of Greece in 1981. Mercouri was the person who, in 1983, conceived and proposed the programme of the European Capital of Culture, which has been established by the European Union since 1985.
She was a strong advocate for the return to Athens of the Parthenon Marbles, which were removed from the Parthenon, and are now displayed in the British Museum.
Maria Amalia Mercouri was born in Athens, Greece in 1920, the daughter of Stamatis Mercouris, a former cavalry officer, member of Parliament for the Democratic Socialist Party of Greece and former Minister for Public Order of Greece, and Eirini Lappa, originated from a prominent family of Athens. Spyridon Merkouris, her paternal grandfather, was one of the most successful Mayors of Athens and played a major role in her early life.

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Melissa Etheridge
Melissa Lou Etheridge (born May 29, 1961) is an American rock singer-songwriter and activist.
Etheridge is known for her mixture of confessional lyrics, pop-based folk-rock, and raspy, smoky vocals. She has also been an iconic gay and lesbian activist since her public coming out in January 1993.
Born in Leavenworth, Kansas, the younger of two girls, to John Etheridge, a psychology teacher at Leavenworth High School, and Elizabeth Williamson, a computer consultant. She attended David Brewer School, which is still located at 17th and Osage Streets. She graduated in 1979 from Leavenworth High School (LHS), 10th Avenue and Halderman. Etheridge was a member of the first "Power and Life" musical/dance group at LHS which is still active today. Her childhood home was at 1902 Miami Street.
Etheridge's interest in music began early; she picked up her first guitar at 8. She began to play in all-men country music groups throughout her teenage years, until she moved to Boston to attend Berklee College of Music.

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Michael Gore
Michael Gore (born March 5, 1951) is an American composer. He, along with lyricist Dean Pitchford, won the Oscar in 1980 for best original song for "Fame" from the film of the same title. He also won the award that year for best original score. Gore is the younger brother of singer/songwriter Lesley Gore.
Gore wrote the music for the notorious Broadway flop Carrie - The Musical. Two of his songs, with lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, were featured in the 2003 movie Camp.
He also composed the theme and score for the 1983 hit film Terms of Endearment starring Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger, notching a hit on the Adult Contemporary chart (and briefly the pop charts) under his own name with the "Theme" from this film.

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Michael Kamen
Michael Arnold Kamen (April 15, 1948 – November 18, 2003) was an American composer (especially of film scores), orchestral arranger, orchestral conductor, song writer, and session musician.
Kamen was born in New York City, USA. He was the second of four sons. His father Saul Kamen was a dentist, and his mother was a teacher.
While attending the The High School of Music & Art in New York City, Michael Kamen met and became friends with Martin Fulterman (later known as Mark Snow, who composed the theme music for The X-Files among other projects). While studying the oboe, he formed a rock classical fusion band called New York Rock & Roll Ensemble, together with classmates Fulterman and Dorian Rudnytsky. The group performed their music while dressed in tuxedos. In the middle of the concert, Fulterman and Kamen would play an oboe duet. The group backed up friend and classmate Janis Ian in a concert at Alice Tully Hall in late 1967.
After graduating high school, Kamen attended The Juilliard School, also in New York City.

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Michael Masser
Michael Masser (born Michael William Masser on March 24, 1941 in Chicago), a former stockbroker, is a composer and producer of popular music. He attended the University of Illinois College of Law, but left to pursue his interest in music. Masser and his wife Ogniana live in Palm Desert, California.
Masser's first major composition hit, co-written with Ron Miller, was "Touch Me in the Morning," recorded by Diana Ross. He co-wrote several other hit songs in the 1970s and 1980s, including three made famous by Whitney Houston, "Greatest Love of All," "Didn't We Almost Have It All," and "Saving All My Love for You."
Other hit songs include "Hold Me" (Teddy Pendergrass and Whitney Houston), "Tonight, I Celebrate My Love" (Roberta Flack and Peabo Bryson), "If Ever You're in My Arms Again" (Peabo Bryson), "In Your Eyes" (Jeffrey Osborne, George Benson), "Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for You" (George Benson, Glenn Medeiros), "Miss You Like Crazy" (Natalie Cole) and "Someone That I Used To Love" (Natalie Cole), "The Greatest Love of All" (George Benson), "So Sad the Song" (Teddy Pendergrass, Gladys Knight), and "It's My Turn" and "Last Time I Saw Him" (Diana Ross). A country cover of "Last Time I Saw Him" by Dottie West also became a hit, peaking at #8 on the country charts. Masser was nominated for an Academy Award in 1976 for Best Music, Original Song, for "Theme from Mahogany (Do You Know Where You're Going To)," which he wrote with Gerry Goffin. The song had actually been first recorded (also in 1975) by fellow Motown labelmate Thelma Houston as a planned single but was pulled before release so that Diana Ross could release it as a theme song (and single) for her film Mahogany.

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Michael McKean
Michael John McKean (born October 17, 1947) is an American actor, comedian, writer, composer and musician, perhaps best known for his portrayal of Squiggy's friend, Leonard "Lenny" Kosnowski, on the sitcom Laverne & Shirley; and for his work in the Christopher Guest ensemble films, particularly as David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap.
McKean was born in New York City, New York, the son of Ruth and Gilbert McKean. As a teenager, he played as a session musician on the Michael Brown single, "Ivy, Ivy" b/w "And Suddenly" which he released under the name of his group, The Left Banke. This action by Brown sparked a lawsuit that basically ended the Left Banke. He began his career (as well as the characters of Lenny and Squiggy) in Pittsburgh while a student at Carnegie Mellon University; David Lander was a fellow student at CMU. Their partnership grew after graduation as part of the comedy group The Credibility Gap with Harry Shearer in Los Angeles, but McKean's breakthrough came in 1976 when he joined the cast of Laverne and Shirley. McKean directed one episode, and the characters became something of a phenomenon, even releasing an album as Lenny and the Squigtones in 1979, which featured a young Christopher Guest on guitar (credited as Nigel Tufnel; the name Guest would use a few years later as part of the spoof rock band, Spinal Tap). "Foreign Legion of Love" was a big hit for the Squigtones, with frequent play on the Dr Demento Show. McKean also played his character in an episode of Happy Days. After leaving Laverne and Shirley in 1982, McKean played David St. Hubbins in the cult spoof documentary movie This is Spinal Tap with both Guest and Shearer, and appeared in the soap opera spoof Young Doctors in Love.

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Michael Sembello
Michael Sembello (b. April 17, 1954) is an American musician and songwriter from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Sembello was born and raised in Philadelphia. He studied with jazz great Pat Martino and began his career in music as a session musician, working increasingly with high-profile artists as a guitarist. By age 17 he was working professionally with Stevie Wonder on electric and acoustic guitar as a studio player on Wonder's Fulfillingness' First Finale. He continued the same year, chosen as one of the core artists who worked on Songs in the Key of Life; an ambitious concept album that took two years in the making. During that time, he is credited as lead and rhythm guitarist on most of the tracks, and shares songwriting credit with Wonder on the song, "Saturn". The list of pop music personalities he worked with, or wrote for, includes Wonder, (from 1974 to 1979), The Temptations, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Chaka Khan, George Benson, Barbra Streisand, Stanley Clarke, David Sanborn, Donna Summer, Miguel Mateos and New Edition among many others.^{[citation needed]}

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Michel Legrand
Michel Jean Legrand (born 24 February 1932, in Bécon-les-Bruyères in the Paris suburbs) is a French musical composer, arranger, conductor, and pianist. His father Raymond Legrand was a conductor and composer renowned for hits such as Irma la douce and his mother, Marcelle Der Mikaëlian (sister of conductor Jacques Hélian), who married Legrand Senior in 1929, was descended from the Armenian bourgeoisie.
Legrand is a prolific composer, having written over 200 film and television scores in addition to many memorable songs. He is best known for his often haunting film music and scores, such as The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) featuring the song "The Windmills of Your Mind" for which he won his first Academy Award.
Legrand has composed more than two hundred film and television scores and several musicals and has made well over a hundred albums. He has won three Oscars (out of 13 nominations) and five Grammys and has been nominated for an Emmy. He was twenty-two when his first album, I Love Paris, became one of the best-selling instrumental albums ever released. He is a virtuoso jazz and classical pianist and an accomplished arranger and conductor who performs with orchestras all over the world.

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Ned Washington
Ned Washington (August 15, 1901 – December 20, 1976) was an American lyricist.
Washington was nominated for eleven Academy Awards from 1940 to 1962. He won the Best Original Music award twice: in 1940 for "When You Wish upon a Star" in Pinocchio and in 1952 for "High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin')" in High Noon.
Some of Washington's most famous songs include:
Ned Washington is a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame. His grave is located in Culver City's Holy Cross Cemetery.

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Neil Young
Neil Percival Young,OC,OM (born November 12, 1945) is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation.
Young began performing as a solo artist in Canada in 1960, before moving to California in 1966, where he co-founded the band Buffalo Springfield along with Stephen Stills and Richie Furay, and later joined Crosby, Stills & Nash as a fourth member in 1969. He forged a successful and acclaimed solo career, releasing his first album in 1968; his career has since spanned over 40 years and 34 studio albums, with a continual and uncompromising exploration of musical styles. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website describes Young as "one of rock and roll’s greatest songwriters and performers". He has been inducted into the Hall of Fame twice: first as a solo artist in 1995, and second as a member of Buffalo Springfield in 1997.
Young's work is characterized by his distinctive guitar work, deeply personal lyrics and signature alto or high tenor singing voice. Although he accompanies himself on several different instruments, including piano and harmonica, his idiosyncratic electric and clawhammer acoustic guitar playing are the defining characteristics of a varyingly ragged and melodic sound. While Young has experimented with differing music styles, including swing and electronic music throughout a varied career, his best known work usually falls into two primary styles: acoustic (folk and country rock) and electric (amplified hard rock, very often in collaboration with the band Crazy Horse). Young has also adopted elements from newer styles such as alternative rock and grunge. His influence on the latter caused some to dub him the "Godfather of Grunge".

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Nicholas Brodszky
Nicholas Brodszky, German: Nikolaus Brodszky (ru: Николай Бродский, April 20, 1905 – December 24, 1958) was a composer of popular songs. He was born in Odessa (now in Ukraine), and died in Hollywood, California.
Brodszky composed for musical films including Love Me or Leave Me (1955) and The Student Prince (1954). He also wrote the score for the Yiddish language film 'Die Purimspieler' (1939).
Among the songs he wrote were "Be My Love" and "I'll Never Stop Loving You" (both with lyrics by Sammy Cahn) and "I'll Walk with God" (with lyrics by Paul Francis Webster).
Both "Be My Love" and "I'll Never Stop Loving You" were Oscar-nominated, as were three more of Brodszky's compositions.

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Nicholas Brodzsky
Nicholas Brodszky, German: Nikolaus Brodszky (ru: Николай Бродский, April 20, 1905 – December 24, 1958) was a composer of popular songs. He was born in Odessa (now in Ukraine), and died in Hollywood, California.
Brodszky composed for musical films including Love Me or Leave Me (1955) and The Student Prince (1954). He also wrote the score for the Yiddish language film 'Die Purimspieler' (1939).
Among the songs he wrote were "Be My Love" and "I'll Never Stop Loving You" (both with lyrics by Sammy Cahn) and "I'll Walk with God" (with lyrics by Paul Francis Webster).
Both "Be My Love" and "I'll Never Stop Loving You" were Oscar-nominated, as were three more of Brodszky's compositions.

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Nicky Ryan
Nicholas Dominick Ryan (born 1949 in Dublin, Ireland) is an Irish music producer, recording engineer and manager for the musician Enya. He previously managed the Irish group Clannad, the band with which Enya first performed. In 1982, when Nicky Ryan left Clannad, Enya followed him. In the video documentary Enya - A Life in Music, Enya states that it was Nicky who first had the idea of layering Enya's voice, thus creating Enya's distinctive style. They now have their own studio, Aigle Music, in Dún Laoghaire.
Nicky Ryan currently lives with Enya's lyricist Roma Ryan. They currently reside in Killiney, Ireland, and have two daughters, Ebony and Persia. Enya lived with them briefly in the north-side suburb of Artane when she first departed Clannad; she now lives in Manderley Castle in Killiney.
In his essay for the Collector's Edition of The Very Best of Enya, Nicky mentions having entered a song contest in his youth for which the prize was a visit to meet the Beatles (one of his favourite groups). He won, with a rendition of Glenn Miller's 'In The Mood', but never claimed his prize, since he could not afford the fare to England to see them. Shortly after finishing school, Nicky worked as a teacher at St. Mary's School For Deaf Girls, near Dublin. He began experimenting with sound engineering, attempting to create a way for the deaf children to 'hear' music.

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Norman Gimbel
Norman Gimbel is an American lyricist of popular songs, television and movie themes whose writing career includes such titles as "Sway", "Canadian Sunset", "Summer Samba", "The Girl from Ipanema", "Killing Me Softly With His Song", "Meditation" and "I Will Wait for You", along with an Oscar for "It Goes Like It Goes" - from the film Norma Rae. During 1984 he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
A native of Brooklyn, Norman Gimbel was self-taught in music and following initial employment with music publisher David Blum, progressed to become a contract songwriter with Edwin H. Morris Music. Small successes and moderate fame came as a result of lively novelty songs "Ricochet", which was popularized in a 1953 recording by Teresa Brewer from which was developed the 1954 Judy Canova film Ricochet Romance, and "A Whale of a Tale", sung by Kirk Douglas in another 1954 production, Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Greater success was earned with Dean Martin's recording of "Sway", which reached #6 on the UK Singles Chart, followed by his first big success, Andy Williams' rendition of "Canadian Sunset", which scored to #1 in 1956.

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Norman Newell
Norman Newell, OBE (25 January 1919 — 1 December 2004) was born in Plaistow, Essex (now Greater London), and was a successful British record producer in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as co-writer of many notable songs. As an A&R manager for EMI he worked with artistes such as Shirley Bassey, Claude François, Vera Lynn, Russ Conway, Bette Midler, Judy Garland, Petula Clark, Jake Thackray, Malcolm Roberts and Peter and Gordon. Newell was particularly known for his recorded productions of West End musicals.
Newell was the head of EMI's Columbia label for many of the label's most successful years. He was also a highly sought after lyricist (sometimes writing under the pen-name, David West), responsible for co-writing songs that included "My Thanks To You" (music by Noel Gay) and "Portrait of My Love" (music by Cyril Ornadel), a huge hit for Matt Monro. In addition he provided the English lyrics for "More" (the theme from the film Mondo Cane,the lyrics of Shirley Bassey's 1961 number one it 'Reach For The Stars' composed by Nini Oliviero and Riz Ortolani), "This Is My Life" ("La vita"), written by Antonio Amurri and Bruno Canfora), "The Importance of Your Love" ("Important C'est La Rose", by Gilbert Bécaud), Monday Morning again ("Le lundi au soleil", by Claude François) and "Never, Never, Never" ("Grande, Grande Grande"). He also wrote (with composer, Philip Green) the United Kingdom's 1962 Eurovision Song Contest entry, "Say Wonderful Things", (sung and recorded by Ronnie Carroll). The song was later recorded in the United States by Patti Page.

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Oscar Hammerstein II
Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II (

/ˈhæmərstaɪn/; July 12, 1895 – August 23, 1960) was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and (usually uncredited) theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for singers and jazz musicians. He co-wrote 850 songs. Hammerstein was the lyricist and playwright in his partnerships; his collaborators wrote the music. Hammerstein collaborated with composers Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, Rudolf Friml and Sigmund Romberg, but his most famous collaboration was with Richard Rodgers.
Hammerstein was born Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein in New York City, the son of Alice (née Nimmo) and William Hammerstein. His grandfather was German-born Jewish theater impresario Oscar Hammerstein I, and his mother was the daughter of Scottish and English parents. Hammerstein was raised an Episcopalian.^{[citation needed]}

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Patty Smyth
Patty Smyth (born June 26, 1957) is an American rock and roll musician. She first enjoyed mainstream success in 1982 as lead singer of the band Scandal and later scored a solo #2 hit with her song "Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough". She is currently married to tennis star John McEnroe.
After growing up in the Brooklyn neighborhood Gerritsen Beach, Smyth joined Scandal as vocalist in 1981. The band released a self-titled debut album the next year. Featuring the song "Goodbye to You", it went on to become Columbia Records' biggest selling EP. In 1984, they put out their follow-up, The Warrior. Buoyed by MTV airplay, the album peaked at #17 on the charts, and the first song off the release, also titled "The Warrior", was a top-ten smash. However, despite their success, internal strife within the group led to their breakup shortly afterwards.
Following the end of Scandal, Smyth was asked by friend Eddie Van Halen to join the band Van Halen to replace David Lee Roth as lead singer. However, she declined the offer. She guest-appeared on The Hooters 1985 album Nervous Night on the song "Where Do the Children Go" as an accompanying vocalist.

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Paul Francis Webster
Paul Francis Webster (December 20, 1907 – March 18, 1984) was an American lyricist who won three Academy Awards for Best Song and was nominated sixteen times for the award.
He was born in New York City, the son of Myron Lawrence Webster and Blanche Pauline Stonehill Webster. He attended the Horace Mann School (Riverdale, Bronx, New York), graduating in 1926, and then went to Cornell University from 1927 to 1928 and New York University from 1928 to 1930, leaving without receiving a degree. He served in the United States Navy and then became a dance instructor at a studio in New York City. By 1931, however, he turned his career direction to writing song lyrics. His first professional lyric was Masquerade (music by John Jacob Loeb) which became a hit in 1932, performed by Paul Whiteman.
In 1935 Twentieth Century Fox signed him to a contract to write lyrics for Shirley Temple's films, but shortly afterward he went back to freelance writing. His first hit was a collaboration in 1941 with Duke Ellington on the song "I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)".

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Paul Jabara
Paul Jabara (January 31, 1948 – September 29, 1992) was an American actor, singer, and songwriter of Lebanese ancestry. He wrote Donna Summer's "Last Dance" from Thank God It's Friday (1978) and Barbra Streisand's song "The Main Event/Fight" from The Main Event (1979). He cowrote the Weather Girls hit, "It's Raining Men" with Paul Shaffer. Jabara's cousin and close friend Jad Azkoul is also a Lebanese-American musician specialising in classical guitar.
Jabara was in the original cast of the stage musicals Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar. He took over the role of Frank-N-Furter in the Los Angeles Production of The Rocky Horror Show when Tim Curry left the production to film the movie version in England. He appeared in John Schlesinger's 1975 film, "The Day of the Locust", where he sang the production number "Hot Voo-Doo". In Thank God It's Friday he played the role of Carl, the lovelorn and nearsighted disco goer, and he also contributed as a singer on two tracks on the original soundtrack album.

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Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM (born 18 June 1942) is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of the Beatles (1960–1970) and Wings (1971–1981), he has been described by Guinness World Records as "The Most Successful Composer and Recording Artist of All Time", with 60 gold discs and sales of over 100 million albums and 100 million singles. With John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, he gained worldwide fame as a member of the Beatles, and with Lennon formed one of the most celebrated songwriting partnerships of the 20th century. After leaving the Beatles, he began a solo career and later formed the band Wings with his first wife, Linda Eastman, and singer-songwriter Denny Laine.
According to the BBC, his Beatles song "Yesterday" has been covered by over 2,200 artists—more than any other song. Wings' 1977 release, "Mull of Kintyre", became one of the best-selling singles ever in the UK, and he is "the most successful songwriter" in UK chart history, according to Guinness. As a songwriter or co-writer, he is included on thirty-one number one titles on the Billboard Hot 100, and as of 2012 he has sold over 15.5 million RIAA certified units in the United States.

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Paul Simon
Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13, 1941) is a grammy award winning American singer-songwriter, poet and guitarist.
Simon's international fame and success began as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, launched in 1964 with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached No. 1 on the U.S. singles charts: "The Sound of Silence", "Mrs. Robinson", and "Bridge Over Troubled Water". The duo split up in 1970 at the height of their popularity, and Simon began a successful solo career, recording three highly acclaimed albums over the next five years. In 1986, he released Graceland, an album inspired by South African township music. Simon also wrote and starred in the film One-Trick Pony in 1980 and co-wrote the Broadway musical The Capeman in 1998.
Simon has earned 12 Grammys for his solo and collaborative work, including the Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2001, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 2006 was selected as one of the "100 People Who Shaped the World" by Time magazine. Among many other honors, Simon was the first recipient of the Library of Congress' Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2007. In 1986 Simon was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music where he currently serves on the Board of Trustees.

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Perry Botkin, Jr.
Perry Botkin, Jr. (born 16 April 1933 in New York, New York) is an American composer, producer, arranger, and musician. He had a successful career in music for over forty years. As an arranger, he worked with Bobby Darin, Harry Nilsson, The Lettermen, Ed Ames, and Harpers Bizarre, among others. The film scores that he composed are similar to the music of his partner and counterpart, Barry De Vorzon.
In 1990, Botkin retired from the commercial music industry, and began self-producing CDs of electronic music. James Herbert, in the liner notes for the first of these recordings, says, "With these new musical works, Perry Botkin has achieved his musical goal. He has succeeded in being himself."

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Peter Cetera
Peter Paul Cetera (

/səˈtɛrə/ sə-TERR-ə; born September 13, 1944 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American singer, songwriter, bassist and producer best known for being an original member of the rock band Chicago, before launching a successful solo career. As a solo artist, Cetera has scored six Top 40 singles, including two that reached number 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart.
Cetera was born and raised in the Morgan Park section of Chicago, Illinois, located on the far South Side. He was the second of six children and is of Polish descent. According to one source his father worked as a "machinist". Cetera's siblings include two brothers, Tim Cetera and Kenny Cetera, who are listed as contributing musicians on some of the recordings he made with Chicago and on some of his solo recordings.
Cetera attended Mendel Catholic Prep High School, graduating in 1962, and is listed among the "Notable Alumni".
Cetera's interest in music began at 11 years of age when his parents bought him an accordion instead of the guitar he wanted. When he was 15, some older students from his high school took him to a club to see a band called The Rebel Rockers, which led to his purchasing an acoustic guitar at Montgomery Ward.

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Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950) is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career. His 1986 album, So, is his most commercially successful, and the album's biggest hit, "Sledgehammer", won a record nine MTV Awards at the 1987 MTV Video Music Awards, and the song is the most played music video in the history of the station.
More recently, Gabriel has focused on producing and promoting world music and pioneering digital distribution methods for music. He has also been involved in various humanitarian efforts. Gabriel has won numerous music awards throughout his career, including three Brit Awards—winning Best British Male in 1987, six Grammy Awards, thirteen MTV Video Music Awards, and in 2007 he was honoured as a BMI Icon at the 57th annual BMI London Awards for his “influence on generations of music makers.” Gabriel was also awarded the Polar Music Prize in 2009, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis in 2010.

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Phil Collins
Philip David Charles "Phil" Collins, LVO (born 30 January 1951) is an English singer-songwriter, drummer, pianist and actor best known as a drummer and vocalist for British progressive rock group Genesis and as a solo artist.
Collins sang the lead vocals on several chart hits in the United Kingdom and the United States between 1975 and 2010, either as a solo artist or with Genesis. His singles, sometimes dealing with lost love, ranged from the drum-heavy "In the Air Tonight", dance pop of "Sussudio", piano-driven "Against All Odds", to the political statements of "Another Day in Paradise".
Collins's professional music career began as a drummer, originally in a band called The Real Thing with Andrea Bertorelli, who later became his first wife. Collins played drums and shared lead vocals (with Brian Chatton) in Flaming Youth which recorded one album, (Ark II). In 1970, he took over drums for Genesis, which had already recorded two albums. In Genesis, Collins originally supplied backing vocals for front man Peter Gabriel, singing lead on only two songs: "For Absent Friends" from 1971's Nursery Cryme album and "More Fool Me" from Selling England by the Pound, which was released in 1973. Following Gabriel's departure in 1975, Collins became the group's lead singer.

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Quincy Jones
Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. (born March 14, 1933) is an American record producer, conductor, arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend Award in 1991. He is particularly recognized as the producer of the album Thriller, by pop icon Michael Jackson, which has sold more than 110 million copies worldwide, and as the producer and conductor of the charity song “We Are the World”.
In 1968, Jones and his songwriting partner Bob Russell became the first African Americans to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song "The Eyes of Love" from the Universal Pictures film Banning. That same year, he became the first African American to be nominated twice within the same year when he was nominated for Best Original Score for his work on the music of the 1967 film In Cold Blood. In 1971, Jones would receive the honor of becoming the first African American to be named musical director/conductor of the Academy Awards ceremony. He was the first African American to win the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1995. He is tied with sound designer Willie D. Burton as the most Oscar-nominated African American, each of them having seven nominations. At the 2008 BET Awards, Quincy Jones was presented with the Humanitarian Award. He was played by Larenz Tate in the 2004 biopic about Ray Charles, Ray.

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Ralph Blane
Ralph Blane (July 26, 1914 – November 13, 1995) was an American composer, lyricist, and performer.
Born Ralph Uriah Hunsecker in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, Blane was the son of grocery store owners. He attended Tulsa Central High School. He began his career as a radio singer for NBC in the 1930s before turning to Broadway, where he was featured in New Faces of 1936, Hooray for What!, and Louisiana Purchase. He contributed the lyrics and music to Best Foot Forward (1941) and Three Wishes for Jamie (1952).
With partner Hugh Martin, Blane penned many American standards for the stage and MGM musicals. The team's best-known songs include "The Boy Next Door", "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "The Trolley Song", all written for the 1944 film musical Meet Me in St. Louis. Facing the challenge of writing a song about a trolley, the duo visited a public library, and in a book they found the caption "Clang, clang, clang went the trolley", which formed the nucleus for the lyric of their song, which earned them their first Oscar nomination (their second was for "Pass That Peace Pipe", written in collaboration with Roger Edens for the 1947 film adaptation of Good News). Meet Me in St. Louis was adapted for a 1989 Broadway musical of the same name.

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Ralph Rainger
Ralph Rainger (October 7, 1901 – October 23, 1942) was an American composer of popular music principally for films.
Born Ralph Reichenthal in New York City, Rainger embarked on a legal career before escaping to Broadway where he became Clifton Webb's accompanist.
His first hit "Moanin' Low," with lyrics by Howard Dietz, was written for Webb's co-star Libby Holman in the 1929 revue The Little Show. Moving to Hollywood, Rainger teamed up with lyricist Leo Robin to produce a string of successful film songs.
In the years that followed, Rainger wrote or collaborated on such hit songs as "I Wished on the Moon", "Love in Bloom" (comedian Jack Benny’s theme song), "Faithful Forever", "Easy Living", "June in January", "Blue Hawaii", and with Leo Robin on the 1938 Oscar-winning song "Thanks for the Memory", sung by Bob Hope in the film The Big Broadcast of 1938.
Rainger paid one year's tuition fees to the Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg in advance so that Schönberg could pay for the transportation of his belongings to Los Angeles from Paris in 1933.

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Ramey Idriess
Ramey Idriss (1911 - 1971) was an American songwriter, author, composer and musician, educated at Los Angeles Community College.
His birth name was Ramez Idriss but he was also known as Ramey.
Idriss was a musician in dance orchestras on radio and recordings and in films, and also wrote television scripts and special material for the Ritz Brothers, Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante and Marion Hutton. Joining ASCAP in 1947, his most popular song composition was the Oscar-nominated "The Woody Woodpecker Song", as featured in the film Wet Blanket Policy in 1948. Other compositions included "Worry Worry Worry", "The Old Chaperone", "Take a Letter Miss Smith", "I'll Wait", "Leave It to Joan" and "Something Old Something New."

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Ray Evans
Raymond Bernard Evans (February 4, 1915 – February 15, 2007) was an American songwriter. He was a partner in a composing and songwriting duo with Jay Livingston, known for the songs they composed for films. Evans wrote the lyrics and Livingston the music for the songs.
Evans, who was born Jewish, but later moved away from organized religion, citing it as a major cause of violence in the world was born in Salamanca, New York. He was valedictorian of his high school class, where he played clarinet in the band, and received a bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in 1937. He was elected that same year to Pi Gamma Mu, the honor society in the social sciences for his outstanding academic performance at the Wharton School.
Livingston and Evans, both members of ASCAP, won three Academy Awards, in 1948 for the song "Buttons and Bows", written for the movie The Paleface; in 1950 for the song "Mona Lisa", written for the movie Captain Carey, U.S.A.; and in 1956 for the song "Que Sera Sera", featured in the Alfred Hitchcock movie The Man Who Knew Too Much and sung by Doris Day. Another popular song that he and Livingston wrote for a film was the song "Tammy", written for the 1957 movie Tammy and the Bachelor. The song was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song. Livingston and Evans also wrote popular TV themes for shows including Bonanza and Mr. Ed. Their Christmas song Silver Bells intended for the 1951 Bob Hope film The Lemon Drop Kid, has become a Christmas standard.

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Ray Gilbert
Ray Gilbert (5 September 1912, Hartford, Connecticut – 3 March 1976, Los Angeles, California) was a lyricist.
Gilbert is best remembered for the lyrics to the Oscar winning song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" from the film Song of the South, which he wrote with Allie Wrubel in 1947.
He married actress Janis Paige in 1962.
Daughter, actress and singer Joanne Gilbert, July 17,1932

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Ray Heindorf
Ray Heindorf (August 25, 1908 - February 3, 1980) was an American songwriter, composer, conductor, and arranger.
Born in Haverstraw, New York, Heindorf worked as a pianist in a movie house in Mechanicville in his early teens. In 1928, he moved to New York City, where he worked as a musical arranger before heading to Hollywood. He gained his first job as an orchestrator at MGM, where he worked on Hollywood Revue of 1929, and subsequently went on the road playing piano for Lupe Vélez.
After completing this engagement, he joined Warner Bros., composing and/or arranging and conducting music exclusively for the studio for nearly forty years. Heindorf, along with Georgie Stoll at MGM, were jazz aficionados well known in the black entertainment community for employing minority musicians in their studio music departments.
He undertook the musical direction of Judy Garland's 1954 comeback film A Star is Born and made a cameo appearance as himself in the premiere party sequence where Jack Carson's character congratulates him on a great score.

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Ray Parker Jr.
Ray Erskine Parker, Jr. (born May 1, 1954), is an American guitarist, songwriter, producer and recording artist. Parker is known for writing and performing the theme song to the motion picture Ghostbusters, for his solo hits, and performing with his band Raydio as well as Barry White.
Parker was born in Detroit to Venolia and Ray Parker, Sr. He has two siblings: his brother Opelton and his sister Barbara. His father died on March 12, 1992 at age 82; his mother died on December 18, 1993 at age 83.
Parker is a 1972 graduate of Northwestern High School in the Motor City. He was raised in the Dexter-Davison neighborhood on its West Side.
Parker gained his reputation during the late 1960s as a member of the house band at the legendary 20 Grand nightclub. This Detroit hot-spot often featured Tamla/Motown acts, one of which the (Detroit) Spinners, was so impressed with the young guitarist's skills that they added him to their touring group. Parker was also employed as a teenaged studio musician for the emergent Holland-Dozier-Holland's Invictus/Hot Wax stable and his choppy style was particularly prevalent on 'Want Ads', a number one single for Honey Cone.

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Richard A. Whiting
Richard Armstrong Whiting (November 12, 1891 – February 10, 1938) was a composer of popular songs including the standards "Hooray for Hollywood", "Ain't We Got Fun?" and "On the Good Ship Lollipop".
He was born in Peoria, Illinois, and grew up in Detroit, Michigan. He attended the Harvard Military School in Los Angeles, California. Upon his graduation, Whiting began his career as a staff writer for various music publishers. In 1912, he became a personal manager.
In 1919, he moved to Hollywood and wrote a number of film scores. He collaborated with BG DeSylva, Ray Egan, Johnny Mercer, Neil Moret, Leo Robin, Gus Kahn, and Sidney Clare, to produce a number of hits (listed below). He also wrote a number of scores for Broadway plays.
A tribute to Whiting's music along with a medley of his best-known songs formed part of the 1980 Broadway musical A Day in Hollywood / A Night in the Ukraine.
He was the father of singer/actress Margaret Whiting and actress Barbara Whiting Smith, and the grandson of Rep. Richard H. Whiting.

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Richard M. Sherman
Richard Morton Sherman (born June 12, 1928) is an American songwriter who specialized in musical film with his brother Roger Bernard Sherman.
Some of the Sherman Brothers' best-known writing includes the songs from Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, Winnie the Pooh, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Slipper and the Rose, and the Disney theme park song It's a Small World (After All).
Richard Morton Sherman was born in New York City to Russian-Jewish immigrants, Rosa & Al Sherman. Together with his older brother Roger, "The Sherman Brothers" eventually followed in their songwriting father's footsteps to form a long-lasting songwriting partnership.
Following seven years of frequent cross-country moves, the Sherman family finally settled down in Beverly Hills, California in 1937. Throughout Richard's years at Beverly Hills High School he became fascinated with music and studied several instruments including the flute, clarinet, piccolo and piano.
At his 1946 graduation from Beverly Hills High School, Richard Sherman and André Previn played a musical duet. Previn played piano and Sherman played flute. Coincidentally, in 1965 both composers won Oscars in music categories for different films.

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Richard Rodgers
Richard Charles Rodgers (June 28, 1902 – December 31, 1979) was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. His compositions have had a significant impact on popular music down to the present day, and have an enduring broad appeal.
Rodgers was the first person to win what are considered the top show business awards in television, recording, movies and Broadway—an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony—now known collectively as an EGOT. He has also won a Pulitzer Prize, making him one of two people (Marvin Hamlisch is the other) to receive each award.
Born into a prosperous ethnic German Jewish family in Arverne, Queens, New York City, Rodgers was the son of Mamie Levy and Dr. William Abrahams Rodgers, a prominent physician who had changed the family name from Abrahams. Richard began playing the piano at age six. He attended P.S. 10, Townsend Harris Hall and DeWitt Clinton High School. Rodgers spent his early teenage summers in Camp Wigwam (Waterford, Maine) where he composed some of his first songs.

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Riz Ortolani
Riziero "Riz" Ortolani (born September 4, 1931 in Pesaro, Italy) is an Italian film composer.
In the early 1950s Ortolani was founder and member of a jazz band of national Italian renown. His first score he wrote for the 1962 Paolo Cavara and Gualtiero Jacopetti pseudo-documentary Mondo Cane, whose main title-song More earned him a Grammy and also was nominated for an Oscar as Best Song.
The success of the soundtrack of Mondo Cane led Ortolani to score films in England and the United States such as The 7th Dawn (1964), The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964), The Glory Guys (1965) and The Spy with a Cold Nose (1966). Another world famous track was his main-title for the movie O Cangaceiro (1970).
Ortolani scored all or parts of over 200 films, including German westerns like Apache's Last Battle (Old Shatterhand, 1964) and a long series of Italian giallo, spaghetti westerns, Eurospy, exploitation and mondo films.
Other films Ortolani has scored include Il Sorpasso (1962), Io ho paura (1977), Castle of Blood (1964), Anzio (1968), The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom (1968), Sette orchidee macchiate di rosso (1972), Africa Addio (1966), Addio Zio Tom (1971), House on the Edge of the Park (1980), Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and first series of famous La Piovra (Octopus, 1984).

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Robb Royer
Robert Wilson "Robb" Royer (born December 6, 1942 in Los Angeles, California) was the bassist, guitarist, keyboardist, and songwriter with Bread from 1968 to 1971. While he was with the band, they had a #5 UK/#1 US hit single with "Make It With You". He was replaced by Larry Knechtel in 1971.
In 1970, Royer and Jimmy Griffin, under the pseudonyms Robb Wilson and Arthur James, wrote the lyrics for "For All We Know," featured in the film Lovers and Other Strangers. It won the Academy Award for Best Song.
Before co-founding Bread, Royer had been a member of the band The Pleasure Fair, whose only album in 1967 was produced and arranged by David Gates, Royer's future bandmate in Bread.
Now living and working in Nashville, his songwriting credits include works for Jimmy Griffin, The Remingtons, Mary Chapin Carpenter, John Michael Montgomery, Randy Travis, Billy Burnette, The Finnigan Brothers (Mike Finnigan) and others.
Robb Royer was exposed to recordings of classical music from early childhood and in Junior High school he pursued playing clarinet in the band. He attended and graduated from Sierra High School in Tollhouse, CA. While there he briefly participated in marching band but preferred to focus on the music rather than the marching. During his senior year he participated in concert band playing alto saxophone.

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Robert B. Sherman
Robert Bernard Sherman (December 19, 1925 – March 5, 2012) was an American songwriter who specialized in musical films with his brother Richard Morton Sherman. Some of the Sherman Brothers' best known songs were incorporated into movies and animations like Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Slipper and the Rose, Charlotte's Web and the theme park song of "It's a Small World (After All)".
Robert Bernard Sherman was born on December 19, 1925 in New York City to Russian-Jewish immigrants, Rosa and Al Sherman. Al Sherman, a songwriter, paid for Robert's hospital delivery costs with a royalty check that had arrived that day for the song "Save Your Sorrow". Al Sherman was to become a well known Tin Pan Alley songwriter.
As a youth, Robert Sherman excelled in intellectual pursuits, taking up the violin and piano, painting and writing poetry. Following seven years of frequent cross-country moves, the Shermans finally settled down in Beverly Hills, California. Some of the primary schools Robert attended in Manhattan included PS 241 and the Ethical Culture Fieldston School; in California, the El Rodeo School.

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Robert Goulet
Robert Gerard Goulet (November 26, 1933 – October 30, 2007) was a Canadian American entertainer as a singer and actor. He is probably best known for originating the role of Lancelot in the 1960 Broadway musical Camelot and his numerous appearances in Las Vegas.
Goulet was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the only son of French Canadian parents Jeanette Gauthier and Joseph Georges André Goulet, a laborer. Through his father he was a descendant of Zacharie Cloutier as well as Jacques Goulet. Shortly after his father's death, 13-year-old Robert moved with his mother and sister Claire to Girouxville, Alberta, and he spent his formative years in Canada.
Due to the Canadian citizenship law at the time, Goulet was not awarded Canadian citizenship despite his Canadian parents, making him a Lost Canadian. A 2008 law allowed him to retroactively be rewarded citizenship, but he died before it was received.
Goulet's rise to fame started at the age of five when his aunts and uncles blackened his face with burnt cork and prompted him to do Al Jolson impressions. Though his performance was well-received by his relatives, the experience was deeply traumatic for the young Goulet, and left him with performance anxiety which plagued him for many years. Despite this stage fright, Goulet was encouraged by his parents to continue performing.

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Robert Stolz
Robert Elisabeth Stolz (25 August 1880 – 27 June 1975) was an Austrian songwriter and conductor as well as a composer of operettas and film music.
The great-nephew of the soprano Teresa Stolz, Stolz was born of musical parents in Graz. His father was a conductor and his mother a concert pianist. At the age of seven, he toured Europe as a pianist, playing Mozart. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory with Robert Fuchs and Engelbert Humperdinck. From 1899 he held successive conducting posts at Maribor (then called Marburg), Salzburg and Brno before succeeding Artur Bodanzky at the Theater an der Wien in 1907. There he conducted, among other pieces, the first performance of Oscar Straus's Der tapfere Soldat (The Chocolate Soldier) in 1908, before leaving in 1910 to become a freelance composer and conductor. Meanwhile, he had begun to compose operettas and individual songs and had a number of successes in these fields.
After serving in the Austrian Army in World War I, Stolz devoted himself mainly to cabaret, and moved to Berlin in 1925. Around 1930, he started to compose music for films, such as the first German sound film Zwei Herzen im Dreivierteltakt (Two Hearts in Waltz Time), of which the title-waltz rapidly became a popular favourite. Some earlier Stolz compositions, such as "Adieu, mein kleiner Gardeoffizier" from his operetta Die lustigen Weiber von Wien, became known to wider audiences through the medium of film.

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Robin Williams
Robin McLaurin Williams (born July 21, 1951) is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork & Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting. He has also won two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and five Grammy Awards.
Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois. His mother, Laura McLaurin (née Smith, 1922–2001), was a former model from New Orleans, Louisiana. His father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams (September 10, 1906 – October 18, 1987), was a senior executive at Ford Motor Company in charge of the Midwest region. His maternal great-great-grandfather was senator and Mississippi governor Anselm J. McLaurin. Williams is of English, Welsh, Irish, and French ancestry. He was raised in the Episcopal Church (his mother practiced Christian Science). He grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he was a student at the Detroit Country Day School, and later moved to Woodacre, Marin County, California, where he attended the public Redwood High School. Williams studied at Claremont McKenna College (then called Claremont Men's College) for four years. He has two half-brothers: Todd (who died August 14, 2007) and McLaurin.

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Rod McKuen
Rod McKuen is an American poet, songwriter, composer, and singer. He was one of the best-selling poets in the United States during the late 1960s. Throughout his career, McKuen produced a wide range of recordings, which included popular music, spoken word poetry, film soundtracks, and classical music. He earned two Oscar nominations and one Pulitzer nomination for his serious music compositions. McKuen's translations and adaptations of the songs of Jacques Brel were instrumental in bringing the Belgian songwriter to prominence in the English-speaking world. His poetry dealt with themes of love, the natural world, and spirituality, and his thirty books of poetry sold millions of copies.
Rodney Marvin McKuen was born on 29 April 1933 in Oakland, California. Raised by his mother and stepfather, who was a violent alcoholic, McKuen ran away from home at the age of 11. He drifted along the West Coast, supporting himself as a ranch hand, surveyor, railroad worker, lumberjack, rodeo cowboy, stuntman, and radio disk jockey, always sending money home to his mother.

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Rod Temperton
Rodney Lynn "Rod" Temperton (born October 15, 1947 in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, England) is an English songwriter, record producer and musician most famous for writing a number of songs performed by Michael Jackson, including the title track of Jackson's Thriller, the biggest-selling album of all time.

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Roger Edens
Roger Edens (9 November 1905 - 13 July 1970) was a Hollywood composer, arranger and associate producer, and is considered one of the major creative figures in Arthur Freed's musical film production unit at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during the "golden era of Hollywood".
Edens was born in Hillsboro, Texas. His parents were of Scots-Irish ancestry. He worked as a piano accompanist for ballroom dancers before going to work as a musical conductor on Broadway. He went to Hollywood in 1932 along with his protege Ethel Merman, writing and arranging her material for her films at Paramount. In 1935, he joined MGM as a musical supervisor and occasional composer and arranger, notably of music for Judy Garland. He also appeared on screen opposite Eleanor Powell in a cameo in Broadway Melody of 1936.
Arthur Freed, producer of musicals at MGM, was impressed by Edens and soon made him integral to his production team, which was rapidly growing and featured many of the greatest talents, recruited by Freed himself. Freed built a cabinet around himself, and in the early 1940s made Edens associate producer. The unit made dozens of popular and extremely successful musical films in the 1940s and into the 1950s, including Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Easter Parade (1948), On the Town (1949), Show Boat (1951), An American in Paris (1951), Singin' in the Rain (1952), and The Band Wagon (1953).

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Roma Ryan
Roma Shane Ryan (born 20 January in Belfast, Northern Ireland) is an Irish writer, poet, and lyricist, currently living in Artane, Ireland, with her husband Nicky.
Ryan is the primary lyricist for the singer Enya, who has stated that the importance of Roma's and Nicky's contributions are such that without them, "Enya" would not exist.
Roma and Nicky Ryan met Enya in 1978; Nicky was managing Enya's family's band Clannad. Enya had just finished secondary school when Nicky Ryan rang her, asking if she would become a member of the group. The Ryans and Enya left Clannad several years later to focus on their own musical careers. Enya originally wrote instrumental melodies. Roma found these melodies "very visual" and suited to film work; she began to write lyrics to them.
Ryan's lyrics for Enya have won Grammy awards; the song "May It Be" for the The Lord of the Rings film The Fellowship of the Ring was nominated for an Oscar.
Her lyrics can be heard in films such as The Frog Prince (1984), Green Card (1990), L.A. Story (1991), Toys (1992), Cry, the Beloved Country (1995), and Calmi Cuori Appassionati (2001), all of which feature Enya's music.

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Ryan Bingham
Ryan Bingham (born March 31, 1981) is an Americana singer-songwriter currently based in Los Angeles, California.
After garnering critical acclaim for his first two studio releases on Lost Highway Records, 2007's Mescalito and 2009's Roadhouse Sun, Ryan Bingham went on to collaborate with Grammy-winning producer T Bone Burnett on the soundtrack for the 2009 acclaimed film Crazy Heart, including notably co-penning & performing the film’s award-winning theme song "The Weary Kind". The title track earned Bingham an Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Critics' Choice Award for “Best Song” in 2010, as well as a Grammy Award for "Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media" in 2011. As a result of his monumental year, the Americana Music Association honored Bingham with the organization's top award in 2010: “Artist of the Year”.
Ryan Bingham joined back up with his band The Dead Horses to release their third studio album Junky Star on August 31, 2010. The album debuted in the Top 20 on the Billboard 200 Chart & in the Top 10 on the Billboard Rock Album Chart, making Junky Star Bingham’s highest charting & most successful release to date.

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Sammy Cahn
Sammy Cahn (June 18, 1913 – January 15, 1993) was an American lyricist, songwriter and musician. He is best known for his romantic lyrics to films and Broadway songs, as well as stand-alone songs premiered by recording companies in the Greater Los Angeles Area. He and his collaborators had a series of hit recordings with Frank Sinatra during the singer's tenure at Capitol Records, but also enjoyed hits with Dean Martin, Doris Day and many others. He played the piano and violin. He won the Academy Award four times for his songs, including the popular song "Three Coins in the Fountain".
Cahn was born as Samuel Cohen in the Lower East Side of New York City, the only son (he had four sisters) of Abraham and Elka Reiss Cohen, who were Jewish immigrants from Galicia, Austria. His sisters, Sadye, Pearl, Florence, and Evelyn, all studied the piano. His mother did not approve of Sammy studying it though, for she thought the piano was a woman's instrument, so he took violin lessons. After three lessons and following his bar mitzvah, he joined a small dixieland band called Pals of Harmony, that would tour the Catskill Mountains in the summer and also did private parties. This new dream of Cahn's destroyed any hopes his parents had for him to be a professional man.

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Sammy Fain
Sammy Fain, born Samuel E. Feinberg, (June 17, 1902 – December 6, 1989) was an American composer of popular music.
Sammy Fain was born in New York City. In 1923, Fain appeared with Artie Dunn in a short film directed by Lee De Forest filmed in DeForest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process. In 1925, Fain left the Fain-Dunn act to devote himself to music. Fain was a self-taught pianist who played by ear. He began working as a staff pianist and composer for music publisher Jack Mills.
Later, Fain worked extensively in collaboration with Irving Kahal. Together they wrote classics such as "Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella". Another lyricist who collaborated with Fain was Lew Brown, with whom he wrote "That Old Feeling". His Broadway credits also include Everybody's Welcome, Right This Way, Hellzapoppin', I'll Be Seeing You, Flahooley, Ankles Aweigh, Christine and Something More.
Fain also composed music for more than 30 films in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. He was nominated for the best Original Song Oscar nine times, winning twice, with "Secret Love" from Calamity Jane in 1954 and with "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing" from the movie of the same title in 1955. He co-wrote both songs with Paul Francis Webster, another long-time collaborator. Fain wrote the second theme to the TV series Wagon Train in 1958, which was called "(Roll Along) Wagon Train". He also contributed to the song scores for the Walt Disney animated films Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and The Rescuers.

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Shel Silverstein
Sheldon Allan "Shel" Silverstein (September 25, 1930 – May 8/9, 1999), was an American poet, singer-songwriter, musician, composer, cartoonist, screenwriter and author of children's books. He styled himself as Uncle Shelby in his children's books. Translated into more than 30 languages, his books have sold over 20 million copies.
Born in Chicago, Silverstein began drawing at age 12 by tracing the works of Al Capp. He told Jean Mercier of Publishers Weekly: "When I was a kid—12 to 14, around there—I would much rather have been a good baseball player or a hit with the girls, but I couldn't play ball. I couldn't dance. Luckily, the girls didn't want me. Not much I could do about that. So I started to draw and to write. I was also lucky that I didn't have anybody to copy, be impressed by. I had developed my own style; I was creating before I knew there was a Thurber, a Benchley, a Price and a Steinberg. I never saw their work till I was around 30. By the time I got to where I was attracting girls, I was already into work, and it was more important to me. Not that I wouldn't rather make love, but the work has become a habit."

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Sidney D. Mitchell
Sidney D. Mitchell (June 15, 1888, Baltimore, Maryland - February 25, 1942, Los Angeles, California) was a Hollywood film industry lyricist and composer. He is best known for his collaborations with Lew Pollack on movie scores at Twentieth Century Fox in the 1930s and 1940s. Together with Louis Alter, Mitchell was nominated for an Oscar in 1937 for the song "A Melody from the Sky" which was in the 1936 motion picture The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. He contributed a large number of songs to other films, and his work continues to be featured to the present day. He also served as a screenwriter for three movies and a director for the film Umpa in 1933.

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Siedah Garrett
Siedah Garrett (born June 24, 1960, Los Angeles, California) is a Grammy winning and two-time Oscar nominated American songwriter and singer.
She appeared as a contestant on Password Plus in 1980.
She performed "One Man Woman" on Quincy Jones' Grammy-Award winning "Back on the Block."
She joined the soul / funk outfit Plush, their self titled album was issued in 1982 on RCA Records.
Her hits include "Don't Look Any Further" with Dennis Edwards (#72 pop, #2 R&B in 1984); "Do You Want It Right Now?" in 1985 from the Fast Forward soundtrack (#3 Hot Dance Music/Club Play and #63 R&B), which was covered by Taylor Dayne in 1988 and later covered by Armand Van Helden in 2007 under the title "I Want Your Soul"; "Everchanging Times" from the movie Baby Boom (#30 on the Adult Contemporary chart in 1987), and "K.I.S.S.I.N.G." (#97 in 1988). The latter song went to #1 on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart.
In 1987 Garrett was involved in Michael Jackson's Bad album, singing a duet with Jackson on "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" and co-writing the #1 single "Man in the Mirror". The association with Jackson enabled her to sing on several Quincy Jones albums of the 1980s and 1990s, co-writing his hit songs "Tomorrow (A Better You, Better Me)", "Back On The Block," and "The Secret Garden." Garrett also toured with Michael Jackson from 1992 to 1993 on his Dangerous World Tour, singing backing vocals and duetting with him for "I Just Can't Stop Loving You".

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Sjón
Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson (born 27 August 1962), known as Sjón (pronounced /ˈʃoʊn/ SHOHN in English), is an internationally known Icelandic author and poet. His pen name is formed from his given name (Sigurjón), and means 'Sight'.
As a poet Sjón published his first volume of poetry, Sýnir ('Visions') in 1978 and has since published numerous books of poetry, prose and even children's novels. In 2005 Sjón was awarded the The Nordic Council's Literature Prize for the novel Skugga-Baldur ('The Blue Fox'), but was until his international breakthrough with that book perhaps best known in the English speaking world for writing the lyrics to several songs of the Icelandic singer Björk. His novels have been published in 23 languages, among them Italian, Spanish, Dutch, German, English, French and Turkish. The Blue Fox was nominated for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2009.
Active on the Icelandic music scene since the early 80's Sjón has collaborated with many of the best known artists of the era and featured as guest vocalist on a rare Sugarcubes 12" single Luftgitar (air guitar) in 1987 using the name Johnny Triumph; this was accompanied by a music video of Sjón playing an invisible guitar with Björk and Einar Örn Benediktsson. Sjón would occasionally reprise this role for the final encore of Sugarcubes concerts, including the band's one-off 2006 reunion show in Reykjavík. Still involved in the Icelandic music scene, Sjón is on the board of the Bad Taste (Smekkleysa) record label and a member of the advisory board for Kraumur Music Fund, which "aim is to strengthen Icelandic musical life, primarily by supporting young musicians in performing and presenting their works."

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Stephen Flaherty
Stephen Flaherty (born September 18, 1960) is an American composer of musical theatre. He works most often in collaboration with the lyricist/bookwriter Lynn Ahrens. They are best known for writing the Broadway musicals Once on This Island, which was nominated for eight Tony Awards, Seussical , which was nominated for the Grammy Award and Ragtime, which was nominated for twelve Tony Awards and won Best Original Score. Flaherty was also nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards with Lynn Ahrens for his songs and song score for the animated film musical Anastasia.
Flaherty was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began studying piano at the age of seven. When he was twelve he knew he wanted to write musicals and by age fourteen he had already composed his first musical score. He attended South Hills Catholic High School in Pittsburgh and later studied musical composition and piano at University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, graduating in 1982. He did additional graduate studies in Musical Theater at New York University.

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Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim (

/ˈsɒnd.haɪm/) (born March 22, 1930) is an American composer and lyricist known for his contributions to musical theatre. He is the winner of an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards (more than any other composer) including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award. Described by Frank Rich of the New York Times as "the greatest, and perhaps best-known artist working in musical theatre", his most famous works include (as composer/lyricist) A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods. He also wrote the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy.
Sondheim has also written material for movies, including the 1981 Warren Beatty film Reds, contributing the song "Goodbye For Now". He also wrote five songs for the 1990 movie Dick Tracy, including "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)", which won the Academy Award for Best Song.

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Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris (born May 13, 1950 as Stevland Hardaway Judkins), known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, a child prodigy who developed into one of the most creative musical figures of the late 20th century. Blind since shortly after birth, Wonder signed with Motown's Tamla label at the age of eleven, and continues to perform and record for Motown to this day.
Among Wonder's best known works are singles such as "Superstition", "Sir Duke", "I Wish" and "I Just Called to Say I Love You". Well known albums also include Talking Book, Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life. He has recorded more than thirty U.S. top ten hits and received twenty-two Grammy Awards, the most ever awarded to a male solo artist. Wonder is also noted for his work as an activist for political causes, including his 1980 campaign to make Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday a holiday in the United States. In 2009, Wonder was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace. In 2008, Billboard magazine released a list of the Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists to celebrate the US singles chart's fiftieth anniversary, with Wonder at number five.

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Sting (musician)
Gordon Matthew Thomas SumnerCBE (born October 2, 1951), known by his stage name Sting, is an English musician, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, activist, actor and philanthropist, born on 2 October 1951. Prior to starting his solo career, he was the principal songwriter, lead singer and bassist of the New Wave band The Police.
Sting has varied his musical style throughout his career, incorporating distinct elements of jazz, reggae, classical, New Age, and worldbeat into his music. As a solo musician and member of The Police, Sting has received sixteen Grammy Awards for his work, receiving his first Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance in 1981, three Brit Awards — winning Best British Male in 1994, a Golden Globe, an Emmy Award, and several Oscar nominations for Best Original Song. He is a member of both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Sting was born in Wallsend, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, the eldest of four children born to Audrey (née Cowell), a hairdresser, and Ernest Matthew Sumner, a milkman and engineer. His siblings were Philip, Angela and Anita. Young Gordon would often assist his father with the early-morning milk-delivery rounds, and by age 10 he became obsessed with an old Spanish guitar that had been left behind by an emigrating friend of his father.

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Sylvain Chomet
Sylvain Chomet (born 1963) is a French comic writer, animator and film director.
Born in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines, near Paris, he studied art at high-school until he graduated in 1982. Chomet moved to London in 1988 to work as an animator at the Richard Purdum studio. In September of that year, he established a freelance practice, working on commercials for clients such as Principality, Renault, Swinton and Swissair.
In addition to his animation career, Chomet created many print comics, starting in 1986 with Secrets of the Dragonfly. In 1992 Chomet wrote the script for a science fiction comic called The Bridge In Mud. 1993 saw Chomet writing the story for Léon-la-Came, which was drawn by Nicolas De Crécy for À Suivre magazine. This was published in 1995 and won the René Goscinny Prize in 1996. In 1997, Chomet published Ugly, Poor, and Sick, again with Nicolas De Crécy. This won them the Alph-Art Best Comic Prize at the Angoulême Comic Strip Festival.
In 1991, Chomet started work on his first animated film, The Old Lady and the Pigeons (La Vieille Dame et les pigeons), with backgrounds designed by Nicolas De Crécy. In 1993, Chomet moved to Canada. During 1995 and 1996, he finished work on The Old Lady and the Pigeons. The short film won him a BAFTA, the Grand Prize at the 1997 Annecy International Animated Film Festival, the Cartoon d'or prize, as well as the Audience Prize and Jury Prize at the Angers Premiers Plans Festival. It also received an Oscar nomination for best animated short film.

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Sylvia Fine
Sylvia Fine (August 29, 1913, Brooklyn, New York – October 28, 1991, New York City) was an American lyricist, composer, producer and the wife of the comedian Danny Kaye. The daughter of a dentist and the youngest of three children, she and her future husband grew up within blocks of each other in Brooklyn, but never met until 1939.
Raised in a Jewish household in East New York, she attended Thomas Jefferson High School and studied music at Brooklyn College, where she wrote the music for the school's alma mater, with lyrics from the poet Robert Friend.
She was working as an audition pianist when she met Danny Kaye; both were working on a short-lived Broadway show. Fine also wrote the lyrics and music for it. Though the pair had never met, they discovered something in common. Kaye had once worked for Fine's father: watching his office while the dentist went to lunch. Dr. Fine also had to fire his future son-in-law for doing woodworking with his dental drills. After a whirlwind romance, they were married on January 3, 1940. Kaye proposed on the telephone while working in Florida; Fine was in New York. She made the trip to Fort Lauderdale where they were married.

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Sérgio Mendes
Sérgio Santos Mendes (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈsɛχʒiu ˈsɐ̃tuʒ ˈmẽdʒiʃ]; born February 11, 1941 in Niterói, Brazil) is a Brazilian musician. He has over fifty-five releases, and plays bossa nova heavily crossed with jazz and funk. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2012 as co-writer of the song "Real In Rio" from the animated film Rio.
Mendes is married to Gracinha Leporace who has performed with her husband since the early 1970s. He has collaborated with many artists through the years, including the Black Eyed Peas, with whom he re-recorded a version of his original breakthrough hit "Mas Que Nada".
The child of a physician in Niterói, Brazil, Mendes attended the local conservatory with hopes of becoming a classical pianist. As his interest in jazz grew, he started playing in nightclubs in the late-1950s just as bossa nova, a jazz-inflected derivative of samba, was emerging. Mendes played with Antonio Carlos Jobim (regarded as a mentor) and many U.S. jazz musicians who toured Brazil.

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T-Bone Burnett
Joseph Henry Burnett (born January 14, 1948), widely known as T-Bone Burnett, is an American musician, songwriter, and soundtrack and record producer.
He was a guitarist in Bob Dylan's band on the Rolling Thunder Revue. After that tour ended, Burnett and two other members of the backing band formed The Alpha Band, followed by his first solo album in 1980.
Burnett has produced artists such as Roy Orbison, Lisa Marie Presley, John Mellencamp, Los Lobos, Counting Crows, Elton John & Leon Russell, Natalie Merchant and The Wallflowers as well as Tony Bennett and k.d. lang on the A Wonderful World album. Burnett won Grammy Awards for the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack and for his work with Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his songwriting contribution to the film Cold Mountain, and won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "The Weary Kind" from Crazy Heart.
He founded the record label DMZ, an imprint of Columbia, and was involved with Mark Heard and Tonio K in the short-lived What? Records. He also oversaw the music for the films Walk the Line and The Big Lebowski.

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Tan Dun
Tan Dun (simplified Chinese: 谭盾; traditional Chinese: 譚盾; pinyin: Tán Dùn, Mandarin pronunciation: [tʰǎn tu̯ə̂n]) (born August 15, 1957, Si Mao, Hunan) is a Chinese contemporary classical composer, most widely known for his scores for the movies Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero.
Tan Dun was born in the village of Simaonae, Changsha in the Hunan province of China. As a child, he was fascinated by the role of the shaman in his village, who conducted rituals and ceremonies, often set to music made with organic objects such as rocks and water. However, as a child in the midst of China's cultural revolution, he found this kind of "backward thinking" frowned upon, and he was sent to work as a rice planter on a government commune.
That, however, had little effect on his affinity for music. He created his own musical group, utilizing peasants in the village playing whatever they could, sometimes just banging on pots and pans. It was from these peasants that he began to learn to play traditional Chinese string instruments. He went on to play the viola for the Beijing Opera Orchestra.

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Ted Koehler
Ted L. Koehler (July 14, 1894 – January 17, 1973) was an American lyricist.
Koehler was born in the year 1894 in Washington, D.C.
He started out as a photo-engraver, but was attracted to the music business, where he started out as a theater pianist for silent films.
He moved on to write for vaudeville and Broadway theatre, and he also produced nightclub shows.
His most successful collaboration was with the composer Harold Arlen, with whom he wrote many famous songs from the 1920s through the 1940s. In 1929 the duo composed their first well-known song, "Get Happy", and went on to create "Let's Fall in Love", "Stormy Weather" and other hit songs. Throughout the early and mid-1930s they wrote for the Cotton Club, a popular Harlem night club, for big band jazz legend Duke Ellington and other top performers, as well as for Broadway musicals and Hollywood films.
Koehler also worked with other composers, including Rube Bloom and Sammy Fain.
Koehler died in 1973 in Santa Monica at the age of 78.

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Terry Gilkyson
Hamilton H. Gilkyson III (June 17, 1916–October 15, 1999), better known as Terry Gilkyson, was an American folk singer, composer, and lyricist.
Gilkyson was born in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania and graduated from St George's high school in 1935. By his early twenties, he had become a worker on a ranch in Tucson, Arizona, then joined the military during World War II. In 1947, he married Jane Gilkyson and moved to California to pursue a career as a folk singer.
He wrote and recorded "The Cry Of the Wild Goose", which became a hit song for Frankie Laine in 1950, as well as the 1953 hit song "Tell Me a Story" recorded by Jimmy Boyd and Laine. In 1951 Gilkyson appeared in, as well as wrote continuing songs for, the Cinecolor Western film Slaughter Trail that, in the manner of High Noon, had ballads throughout the film relating to the plot. He was also featured vocalist on The Weavers No. 1 hit recording of "On Top Of Old Smokey", as well as their recording of "Across The Wide Missouri". He appeared and sang in the 1956 Western "Star in the Dust" with John Agar, Mamie Van Doren, and Richard Boone.

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The Edge
David Howell Evans (born 8 August 1961), more widely known by his stage name The Edge (or just Edge), is a musician best known as the guitarist, backing vocalist, and keyboardist of the Irish rock band U2. A member of the group since its inception, he has recorded 12 studio albums with the band and has released one solo record. As a guitarist, The Edge has crafted a minimalistic and textural style of playing. His use of a rhythmic delay effect yields a distinctive ambient, chiming sound that has become a signature of U2's music.
The Edge was born in England to a Welsh family, but was raised in Ireland after moving there as an infant. In 1976, at Mount Temple Comprehensive School, he formed U2 with his fellow students and his older brother Dik. Inspired by the ethos of punk rock and its basic arrangements, the group began to write its own material. They eventually became one of the most popular acts in popular music, with successful albums such as 1987's The Joshua Tree and 1991's Achtung Baby. Over the years, The Edge has experimented with various guitar effects and introduced influences from several genres of music into his own style, including American roots music, industrial music, and alternative rock. With U2, The Edge has also played keyboards, co-produced their 1993 record Zooropa, and occasionally contributed lyrics. The Edge met his second and current wife, Morleigh Steinberg, through her collaborations with the band.

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Thomas Newman
Thomas Montgomery Newman (born October 20, 1955) is an American composer and conductor, best known for his many film scores.
Newman has received a total of ten Academy Award nominations, although as of 2011, he has yet to win the award. He has however won a BAFTA, two Grammys and an Emmy, and has been nominated for a Golden Globe. Newman was honored with the Richard Kirk award at the 2000 BMI Film and TV Awards. The award is given annually to a composer who has made significant contributions to film and television music.
Born in Los Angeles, California, he was the youngest son of Mississippi-born Martha Louise (née Montgomery) and composer Alfred Newman. He is a member of a film-scoring dynasty in Hollywood that includes his father, brother David Newman, sister Maria Newman, uncles Lionel Newman and Emil Newman, cousin Randy Newman (who is also known as a singer and songwriter) and his nephew Joey Newman. Newman was educated at Yale University before starting his career in music.
His first major score was for the 1984 film Reckless. In 1999, Newman composed the score to Sam Mendes' first feature film American Beauty, created using mainly percussion instruments. Newman believed the score helped move the film along without disturbing the "moral ambiguity" of the script, saying "It was a real delicate balancing act in terms of what music worked to preserve that." This was his first collaboration with Mendes, and he would go on to score all of the director's subsequent films except for Away We Go. He received a fourth Oscar nomination for this score, and although he lost again (to John Corigliano for The Red Violin), he did receive a Grammy and a BAFTA.

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Tom Adair
Thomas "Tom" Montgomery Adair (June 15, 1913 – May 24, 1988) was an American songwriter, composer, and screenwriter.
Tom Adair (Thomas Montgomery Adair) was born on 15 June, 1913, in Newton, Kansas, the only child of William Adair and Madge Cochran.
His father owned a clothing store in Newton; around 1923 he sold up and moved the family to Los Angeles. Tom Adair attended Los Angeles Junior College (now Los Angeles City College), and then joined the local power company, working as a clerk on the complaints desk, while writing poems and song lyrics in his spare time.
In 1941, Adair met Matt Dennis in a club and the duo began writing songs together. Adair's song-writing career took him to New York during the 1940s where he penned several Broadway hits, and worked with Tommy Dorsey and Frank Sinatra. He later returned to Los Angeles and worked with writer James B. Allardice on songs for sit-coms.
In 1949 Adair married Frances Jeffords; in later life, they worked together on songs and teleplays for Disney . They had four children, Micheal Adair, Richard Adair, Ann Trousdale (Adair), and Robin Brown (Adair); and four grandchildren Tom Adair, Kristi Adair, Jennifer Adair, and Julie Adair.

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Tom Snow
Thomas Righter Snow (born 1947 in Princeton, New Jersey) is an American songwriter.
Snow has written songs for Joe Cocker "(Even a Fool Would Let Go" with Kerry Chater), "Love Not War" (with Barbara Griffin), Olivia Newton-John ("Deeper Than the Night", "Make a Move On Me", etc.), Melissa Manchester ("You Should Hear How She Talks About You"), The Pointer Sisters ("He's So Shy"), Barbra Streisand, Rita Coolidge ("You", which was also an Australian top 10 hit for American transplant Marcia Hines in 1977 and in 2005), Barry Manilow ("Somewhere Down the Road", a song which was performed on Ally McBeal), Randy Crawford, Leo Sayer, Bette Midler, Michael Johnson ("I'll Always Love You"), Dolly Parton, Kim Carnes ("Don't Call It Love"), Linda Ronstadt ("Don't Know Much" duet with Aaron Neville), Trisha Yearwood, Amy Grant ("Good For Me"), and Christina Aguilera ("So Emotional"). He also co-wrote ("Dreaming of You") for the crossover Mexican-American star Selena which was released posthumously in 1995.

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Tom Springfield
Tom Springfield (born Dionysius P. A. O'Brien, 2 July 1934,) is the brother of Dusty Springfield and an important figure in the 1960s folk and pop music scene. He attended the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe from 1944 to 1950.
Springfield was born in Hampstead, London. Initially, he performed in The Springfields (a vocal group) with his sister and a friend before becoming a record producer and songwriter for The Seekers. He wrote many of their major hits—"I'll Never Find Another You", "A World of Our Own", "The Carnival is Over" (only lyrics) and "Walk with Me"—and co-wrote "Georgy Girl" with Jim Dale: this was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song in 1966.
His other hit compositions include "Adios Amour (Goodbye My Love)", recorded by José Feliciano.
The Springfields' song "Island of Dreams", written by Tom Springfield, has been covered by Mick Thomas, Johnny Tillotson, Mary Hopkin and by the Seekers.
He released two solo albums in the late 1960s, Sun Song (1968) and Love's Philosophy (1969); these were re-released on CD in 2005.

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Tom Whitlock
Thomas Ross "Tom" Whitlock (born 1954) is a songwriter and lyricist best known for his Academy Award and Golden Globe winning song "Take My Breath Away" from the film Top Gun, which he co-wrote with Giorgio Moroder.
Whitlock was born and raised in Springfield, Missouri. As a drummer, he played in many bands and on many recording sessions. In 1977, he was signed to his first recording contract with Mercury Records. In 1983, Mr. Whitlock became a recording engineer in Los Angeles, focusing primarily on film scores and songs for movies such as Scarface, Beverly Hills Cop and II, as well as many others.
With Giorgio Moroder, he co-wrote five songs on the Top Gun soundtrack, including "Take My Breath Away" and the Kenny Loggins hit "Danger Zone". Whitlock was Moroder's mechanic, fixing his Ferraris, before turning into a lyricist. ASCAP shows 113 songs registered, performed by artists such as Berlin, Bonnie Tyler, Jennifer Rush, Michael McDonald, Ray Charles, Graham Nash, Diana Ross, Teddy Pendergrass, Roger Daltrey and John Entwhistle.

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Trey Parker
Trey Parker (born Randolph Severn Parker III; October 19, 1969) is an American actor, voice artist, animator, screenwriter, director, producer and musician, best known for being the co-creator of South Park along with his creative partner and best friend Matt Stone.
Parker started his film career in 1992, making a holiday short titled Jesus vs. Frosty. His first success came from Cannibal! The Musical. From there he made another short titled Jesus vs. Santa, which led him and college friend Stone to create South Park, which began airing on television in 1997. He has won four Emmy Awards for his role in South Park, winning for both "Outstanding Programming More Than One Hour" and "Outstanding Programming Less Than One Hour".
He co-wrote and co-directed the 2011 multi-Tony Award winning musical The Book of Mormon.

wn.com/Trey_Parker

Troy Verges
Troy Verges is an American country music songwriter.
Troy Verges grew up in Louisiana, and when he got his first guitar at age 10, his first impulse wasn’t to learn other people’s songs but to make up his own. He played in bands from age 14 and listened to everything from 1960s folk to punk rock to traditional Cajun music. After high school, he was able to satisfy both his parents and a desire to pursue a music career by aiming for a music business degree. With no such program available in Louisiana, he moved to Murfreesboro to attend Middle Tennessee State University and then to Nashville to finish out his degree at Belmont. It was during those college years that Verges first encountered professional songwriters.
When he was learning the craft of songwriting, Verges instinctively knew how important it was to listen. While still in college at Belmont University’s school of music business, Verges secured an internship at Patrick Joseph Music, one of Music Row’s strongest independent publishers. His favorite job was working in the catalog room listening to every song that came in. His internship led to a few single-song deals and finally a publishing contract a few weeks before he graduated.

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Walter Donaldson
Walter Donaldson (February 15, 1893 - July 15, 1947) was a prolific United States popular songwriter, composing many hit songs of the 1910s and 1920s.
Walter Donaldson was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of a piano teacher. While still in school he wrote original music for school productions, and had his first professional songs published in 1915. The following year he had a hit with "The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady". After serving in the United States Army in World War I, Donaldson was hired as a songwriter by Irving Berlin Music Company. He stayed with Berlin until 1928, producing many hit songs, then in 1928 established his own publishing company. His company was legally known as "Donaldson, Douglas & Gumble, Inc", but all the publications had Walter Donaldson's name in large letters, and the legal name of the company in fine print.
Donaldson is primarily known as a composer, rather than as a lyricist. He published some 600 original songs. His biggest hits included:
Several of these songs were written with lyricist Gus Kahn.

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Walter Kent
Walter Kent (November 29, 1911 - March 2, 1994) was a Jewish American composer who wrote the music for songs including the Christmas standard "I'll Be Home for Christmas", and the wartime hit "(There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover", co-written with fellow American Nat Burton. He died at the age of 82

wn.com/Walter_Kent

Walter Scharf
Walter Scharf (August 1, 1910 - February 24, 2003) was an American film composer.
Born in New York, he was the son of Yiddish theatre comic Bessie Zwerling. While in his 20s, he was one of the orchestrators for George Gershwin's Broadway musical Girl Crazy, became singer Helen Morgan's accompanist, and later worked as pianist and arranger for singer Rudy Vallee.
He began working in Hollywood in 1933, arranging for Al Jolson at Warner Bros., Alice Faye at 20th Century-Fox and Bing Crosby at Paramount. He orchestrated the original version of Irving Berlin's White Christmas for the film Holiday Inn (1942), and from 1942 to 1946 he served as head of music for Republic Pictures.
From 1948 to 1954, Scharf was arranger-conductor for the Phil Harris-Alice Faye radio show.
A ten-time Oscar nominee, Scharf worked on more than 100 films, receiving nominations for his musical direction on such pictures as Danny Kaye's Hans Christian Andersen (1952), Barbra Streisand's Funny Girl (1968) and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971).

wn.com/Walter_Scharf

Will Jennings
Wilbur H. "Will" Jennings (born June 27, 1944, in Kilgore, Texas) is an American songwriter who is popularly known for writing the lyrics for My Heart Will Go On, the theme for the film Titanic. He has been inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame and has won several awards including a Grammy, two Golden Globe awards, and two Academy Awards.
Jennings attended school just outside Tyler, Texas, in the nearby Chapel Hill Independent School District. In 1967, Jennings earned his B.A. from Stephen F. Austin State University, located in Nacogdoches, Texas. He then taught at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire for three years and eventually attended the same institution in 1982.
Throughout his career, Jennings has written for a wide variety of artists including Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Joe Sample, Rodney Crowell, Mariah Carey, Jimmy Buffett, Barry Manilow and Roy Orbison.
With Steve Winwood, Jennings wrote a series albums including While You See A Chance, Arc of a Diver and Back in the High Life, an album which contained the hits Higher Love, The Finer Things, and Back in the High Life Again. Winwood won the Record Of The Year and Outstanding Male Vocal Performance. Both Jennings and Winwood were nominated for the Song of the Year award for "Higher Love."

wn.com/Will_Jennings

Willie Nelson
Willie Hugh Nelson (pronounced /wɪli nɛlsən /; born April 30, 1933) is an American country music singer-songwriter, as well as an author, poet, actor, and activist. The critical success of the album Shotgun Willie (1973), combined with the critical and commercial success of Red Headed Stranger (1975) and Stardust (1978), made Nelson one of the most recognized artists in country music. He was one of the main figures of outlaw country, a subgenre of country music that developed at the end of the 1960s as a reaction to the conservative restrictions of the Nashville sound. Nelson has acted in over 30 films, co-authored several books, and has been involved in activism for the use of biofuels and the legalization of marijuana.

wn.com/Willie_Nelson

Willie Reale
Willie Reale is an American playwright and lyricist who often works with his elder brother Robert Reale.
He had small acting roles in The Hudsucker Proxy, The Laser Man, Tales from the Darkside and The Burning. He is also one of the major creative forces behind the 2009 revival of The Electric Company.
Reale founded the 52nd Street Project in 1981, an organization that brings inner-city children together with professional theater artists to create works. He served as the artistic director for eighteen years and produced hundreds of plays with the Project, which has been replicated at twelve sites across the United States, using a series of publications called the Kid Theater Kit.
Reale is married to producer Jenny Gersten. They have two children, Augustus and Leonardo.
In June 1994, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in recognition of his ingenuity in creating theater and theater education programs for young people.

wn.com/Willie_Reale

Willy DeVille
Willy DeVille (August 25, 1950 – August 6, 2009) was an American singer and songwriter. During his thirty-five year career, first with his band Mink DeVille (1974–1986) and later on his own, Deville created original songs rooted in traditional American musical styles. He worked with collaborators from across the spectrum of contemporary music, including Jack Nitzsche, Doc Pomus, Dr. John, Mark Knopfler, Allen Toussaint, and Eddie Bo. Latin rhythms, blues riffs, doo-wop, Cajun music, strains of French cabaret, and echoes of early-1960s uptown soul can be heard in DeVille's work.
Mink DeVille was a house band at CBGB, the historic New York City nightclub where punk rock was born in the mid-1970s. DeVille helped redefine the Brill Building sound. In 1987 his song "Storybook Love" was nominated for an Academy Award. After his move to New Orleans in 1988, he helped spark the roots revival of classic New Orleans R&B. His soulful lyrics and explorations in Latin rhythms and sounds helped define a new musical style sometimes called "Spanish-Americana".

wn.com/Willy_DeVille

Yip Harburg
Edgar Yipsel Harburg (April 8, 1896 – March 5, 1981), known as E.Y. Harburg or Yip Harburg, was an American popular song lyricist who worked with many well-known composers. He wrote the lyrics to the standards, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?", "April in Paris", and "It's Only a Paper Moon", as well as all of the songs in The Wizard of Oz, including "Over the Rainbow".
Harburg, the youngest of four surviving children (out of ten), was born Isidore Hochberg on the Lower East Side of New York City on April 8, 1896. His parents, Lewis Hochberg and Mary Ricing, were faithful, Yiddish-speakingOrthodox Jews who had emigrated from Russia. Harburg's nickname "Yipsel" (often shortened to "Yip") came about as "Yipsel" is how people pronounced "YPSL" -- the acronym for the Young People's Socialist League of which he was a member. Some have incorrectly believed that "Yipsel" is a Yiddish word meaning "squirrel."
Later, he adopted the name Edgar Harburg. He was best known as Edgar "Yip" Harburg. He attended Townsend Harris High School, where he and Ira Gershwin, who met over a shared fondness for Gilbert and Sullivan, worked on the school paper and became life-long friends. They went on to attend City College (later part of the City University of New York) together.

wn.com/Yip_Harburg

Academy Award for Best Original Song
Presented by	Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Country	United States
Official website	http://www.oscars.org

Academy Award
84th Academy Awards
220px An Academy Award statuette
Awarded for	Excellence in cinematic achievements
Presented by	Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Country	United States
First awarded	May 16, 1929
Official website	www.oscars.org

Ceremony	Date	Best Picture winner	Length of broadcast	Number of viewers	Rating	Host(s)	Venue
1st Academy Awards	May 16, 1929	Wings	No broadcast	—	—	Douglas Fairbanks, William C. deMille	Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel
2nd Academy Awards	April 3, 1930	broadway !The Broadway Melody	—	—	—	William C. deMille	Ambassador Hotel/Millennium Biltmore Hotel
3rd Academy Awards	November 5, 1930	All Quiet on the Western Front	—	—	—	Conrad Nagel
4th Academy Awards	Nov 10, 1931	Cimarron	—	—	—	Lawrence Grant
5th Academy Awards	Nov 18, 1932	Grand Hotel	—	—	—	Lionel Barrymore, Conrad Nagel
6th Academy Awards	Mar 16, 1934	Cavalcade	—	—	—	Will Rogers
7th Academy Awards	Feb 27, 1935	It Happened One Night	—	—	—	Irvin S. Cobb
8th Academy Awards	Mar 5, 1936	Mutiny on the Bounty	—	—	—	Frank Capra
9th Academy Awards	Mar 4, 1937	great z !The Great Ziegfeld	—	—	—	George Jessel
10th Academy Awards	Mar 10, 1938	life of emile !The Life of Emile Zola	—	—	—	Bob Burns
11th Academy Awards	Feb 23, 1939	You Can't Take It With You	—	—	—	None
12th Academy Awards	Feb 29, 1940	Gone with the Wind	—	—	—	Bob Hope
13th Academy Awards	Feb 27, 1941	Rebecca	—	—	—	Bob Hope
14th Academy Awards	Feb 26, 1942	How Green Was My Valley	—	—	—	None
15th Academy Awards	Mar 4, 1943	Mrs. Miniver	—	—	—	Bob Hope
16th Academy Awards	Mar 2, 1944	Casablanca	—	—	—	Jack Benny	Grauman's Chinese Theater
17th Academy Awards	Mar 15, 1945	Going My Way	—	—	—	Bob Hope, John Cromwell
18th Academy Awards	Mar 7, 1946	lost w !The Lost Weekend	—	—	—	Bob Hope, James Stewart
19th Academy Awards	Mar 13, 1947	best years !The Best Years of Our Lives	—	—	—	Jack Benny	Shrine Auditorium
20th Academy Awards	Mar 20, 1948	Gentleman's Agreement	—	—	—	Agnes Moorehead, Dick Powell	Shrine Auditorium
21st Academy Awards	Mar 24, 1949	Hamlet	—	—	—	Robert Montgomery	Pantages Theatre
22nd Academy Awards	Mar 23, 1950	All the King's Men	—	—	—	Paul Douglas
23rd Academy Awards	Mar 29, 1951	All About Eve	—	—	—	Fred Astaire
24th Academy Awards	Mar 20, 1952	american in p !An American in Paris	—	—	—	Danny Kaye
25th Academy Awards	Mar 19, 1953	greatest show !The Greatest Show on Earth	—	40 million	—	Bob Hope, Conrad Nagel	NBC International Theatre
26th Academy Awards	Mar 25, 1954	From Here to Eternity	—	43 million	—	Donald O'Connor, Fredric March	NBC Century Theatre
27th Academy Awards	Mar 30, 1955	On the Waterfront	—	—	—	Bob Hope, Thelma Ritter
28th Academy Awards	Mar 21, 1956	Marty	—	—	—	Jerry Lewis, Claudette Colbert, Joseph L. Mankiewicz
29th Academy Awards	Mar 27, 1957	Around the World in 80 Days	—	—	—	Jerry Lewis, Celeste Holm
30th Academy Awards	Mar 26, 1958	bridge !The Bridge on the River Kwai	—	—	—	Bob Hope, David Niven, James Stewart, Jack Lemmon, Rosalind Russell	Pantages Theatre
31st Academy Awards	Apr 6, 1959	Gigi	—	—	—	Bob Hope, David Niven, Tony Randall, Mort Sahl, Laurence Olivier, Jerry Lewis
32nd Academy Awards	Apr 4, 1960	Ben-Hur	1 hour, 40 minutes	—	—	Bob Hope
33rd Academy Awards	Apr 17, 1961	apartment !The Apartment	—	—	—		Santa Monica Civic Auditorium
34th Academy Awards	Apr 9, 1962	West Side Story	2 hours, 10 minutes	—	—
35th Academy Awards	Apr 8, 1963	Lawrence of Arabia	—	—	—	Frank Sinatra
36th Academy Awards	Apr 13, 1964	Tom Jones	—	—	—	Jack Lemmon
37th Academy Awards	Apr 5, 1965	My Fair Lady	—	—	—	Bob Hope
38th Academy Awards	Apr 18, 1966	sound of m !The Sound of Music	—	—	—
39th Academy Awards	Apr 10, 1967	man for all !A Man for All Seasons	2 hours, 31 minutes	—	—
40th Academy Awards	Apr 10, 1968	In the Heat of the Night	—	—	—
41st Academy Awards	Apr 14, 1969	Oliver!	—	—	—	None	Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
42nd Academy Awards	Apr 7, 1970	Midnight Cowboy	2 hours, 25 minutes	—	43.40
43rd Academy Awards	Apr 15, 1971	Patton	—	—	—
44th Academy Awards	Apr 10, 1972	french !The French Connection	—	—	—	Helen Hayes, Alan King, Sammy Davis, Jr., Jack Lemmon
45th Academy Awards	Mar 27, 1973	godfather1 !The Godfather	2 hours, 38 minutes	—	—	Carol Burnett, Michael Caine, Charlton Heston, Rock Hudson
46th Academy Awards	Apr 2, 1974	sting !The Sting	3 hours, 23 minutes	—	—	John Huston, Burt Reynolds, David Niven, Diana Ross
47th Academy Awards	Apr 8, 1975	godfather2 !The Godfather Part II	3 hours, 20 minutes	—	—	Sammy Davis, Jr., Bob Hope, Shirley MacLaine, Frank Sinatra
48th Academy Awards	Mar 29, 1976	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest	3 hours, 12 minutes	—	—	Goldie Hawn, Gene Kelly, Walter Matthau, George Segal, Robert Shaw
49th Academy Awards	Mar 28, 1977	Rocky	3 hours, 38 minutes	—	—	Warren Beatty, Ellen Burstyn, Jane Fonda, Richard Pryor
50th Academy Awards	Apr 3, 1978	Annie Hall	3 hours, 30 minutes	39.73 million	31.10	Bob Hope
51st Academy Awards	Apr 9, 1979	deer hunter !The Deer Hunter	3 hours, 25 minutes	—	—	Johnny Carson
52nd Academy Awards	Apr 14, 1980	Kramer vs. Kramer	3 hours, 12 minutes	—	—
53rd Academy Awards	Mar 31, 1981	Ordinary People	3 hours, 13 minutes	—	—
54th Academy Awards	Mar 29, 1982	Chariots of Fire	3 hours, 24 minutes	—	—
55th Academy Awards	Apr 11, 1983	Gandhi	3 hours, 15 minutes	—	—	Liza Minnelli, Dudley Moore, Richard Pryor, Walter Matthau
56th Academy Awards	Apr 9, 1984	Terms of Endearment	3 hours, 42 minutes	—	38.00	Johnny Carson
57th Academy Awards	Mar 25, 1985	Amadeus	3 hours, 10 minutes	—	—	Jack Lemmon
58th Academy Awards	Mar 24, 1986	Out of Africa	3 hours, 02 minutes	38.65 million	25.71	Alan Alda, Jane Fonda, Robin Williams
59th Academy Awards	Mar 30, 1987	Platoon	3 hours, 19 minutes	39.72 million	25.94	Chevy Chase, Goldie Hawn, Paul Hogan
60th Academy Awards	Apr 11, 1988	last emperor !The Last Emperor	3 hours, 33 minutes	42.04 million	27.80	Chevy Chase	Shrine Auditorium
61st Academy Awards	Mar 29, 1989	Rain Man	3 hours, 19 minutes	42.77 million	28.41	None	Shrine Auditorium
62nd Academy Awards	Mar 26, 1990	Driving Miss Daisy	3 hours, 37 minutes	40.22 million	26.42	Billy Crystal	Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
63rd Academy Awards	Mar 25, 1991	Dances with Wolves	3 hours, 35 minutes	42.79 million	28.06		Shrine Auditorium
64th Academy Awards	Mar 30, 1992	silence of !The Silence of the Lambs	3 hours, 33 minutes	44.44 million	29.84		Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
65th Academy Awards	Mar 29, 1993	Unforgiven	3 hours, 30 minutes	45.84 million	32.85
66th Academy Awards	Mar 21, 1994	Schindler's List	3 hours, 18 minutes	46.26 million	31.86	Whoopi Goldberg
67th Academy Awards	Mar 27, 1995	Forrest Gump	3 hours, 35 minutes	48.87 million	33.47	David Letterman	Shrine Auditorium
68th Academy Awards	Mar 25, 1996	Braveheart	3 hours, 38 minutes	44.81 million	30.48	Whoopi Goldberg	Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
69th Academy Awards	Mar 24, 1997	english !The English Patient	3 hours, 34 minutes	40.83 million	25.83	Billy Crystal	Shrine Auditorium
70th Academy Awards	Mar 23, 1998	Titanic	3 hours, 47 minutes	57.25 million	35.32	Billy Crystal	Shrine Auditorium
71st Academy Awards	Mar 21, 1999	Shakespeare in Love	4 hours, 02 minutes	45.63 million	28.51	Whoopi Goldberg	Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
72nd Academy Awards	Mar 26, 2000	American Beauty	4 hours, 04 minutes	46.53 million	29.64	Billy Crystal	Shrine Auditorium
73rd Academy Awards	Mar 25, 2001	Gladiator	3 hours, 23 minutes	42.93 million	25.86	Steve Martin	Shrine Auditorium
74th Academy Awards	Mar 24, 2002	beautiful mind !A Beautiful Mind	4 hours, 23 minutes	40.54 million	25.13	Whoopi Goldberg	Kodak Theatre
75th Academy Awards	Mar 23, 2003	Chicago	3 hours, 30 minutes	33.04 million	20.58	Steve Martin
76th Academy Awards	Feb 29, 2004	lord of !The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King	3 hours, 44 minutes	43.56 million	26.68	Billy Crystal
77th Academy Awards	Feb 27, 2005	Million Dollar Baby	3 hours, 14 minutes	42.16 million	25.29	Chris Rock
78th Academy Awards	Mar 5, 2006	Crash	3 hours, 33 minutes	38.64 million	22.91	Jon Stewart
79th Academy Awards	Feb 25, 2007	departed !The Departed	3 hours, 51 minutes	39.92 million	23.65	Ellen DeGeneres
80th Academy Awards	Feb 24, 2008	No Country for Old Men	3 hours, 21 minutes	31.76 million	18.66	Jon Stewart
81st Academy Awards	Feb 22, 2009	Slumdog Millionaire	3 hours, 30 minutes	36.94 million	21.68	Hugh Jackman
82nd Academy Awards	Mar 7, 2010	hurt locker !The Hurt Locker	3 hours, 37 minutes	41.62 million	24.75	Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin
83rd Academy Awards	Feb 27, 2011	kings !The King's Speech	3 hours, 15 minutes	37.63 million	21.97	James Franco, Anne Hathaway
84th Academy Awards	Feb 26, 2012	The Artist	3 hours, 14 minutes	39.30 million	25.50	Billy Crystal	Hollywood and Highland Center
85th Academy Awards	Feb 24, 2013^[43]	-	—	—	—	-	Dolby Theatre
Ceremony	Date	Best Picture winner	Length of broadcast	Number of viewers	Rating	Host(s)	Venue

Alan Menken
Born	(1949-07-22) July 22, 1949 (age 62) New York, NY, U.S.
Genres	Pop, musical theatre
Occupations	Composer, songwriter, pianist, record producer^[1], singer
Instruments	Piano, keyboard
Years active	1980-present
Labels	Disneyland, Walt Disney Records, Warner Bros.

Persondata
Name	Menken, Alan
Alternative names
Short description	American composer
Date of birth	July 22, 1949
Place of birth	New Rochelle, New York, U.S.
Date of death
Place of death


Kathy Griffin (left) and Loretta Devine (right) guest star in "Original Song" as show choir judges.


The scene where Kurt (Colfer, left) and Blaine (Criss, right) kissed was widely praised and called a "sweet, real and, shockingly, un-hyped moment".^[27]

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