Mission: Impossible legend behind iconic theme dies
The Oscar winning composer behind the catchy Mission Impossible theme tune has died, it has been announced.
Grammy Award-winning composer Lalo Schifrin's death at 93 was confirmed by his son Ryan Schifrin, who confirmed his father died of complications from pneumonia on Thursday.
As well as the Mission Impossible theme tune, Schifrin had written over 100 film and television soundtracks, in a decade that spanned over six decades.
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Daily Mail
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Times
an hour ago
- Times
Lalo Schifrin obituary: composer of the Mission Impossible theme
He may not have been a secret government agent like the heroes of the Mission: Impossible TV series or Tom Cruise movies which featured his thrilling theme music, but Lalo Schifrin was an expert at covert operations thanks to his passion for a banned art form. As a jazz-mad teenager growing up in Buenos Aires in the late 1940s, he had to be sneaky in order to feed his voracious appetite for bebop. The Argentinian leader, the dictator Juan Perón, had issued a blanket ban on jazz, so there was none to be heard on the radio or in nightclubs. 'Peron had made a law that Argentinian popular music had to be promoted. And in every theatre, between movies, they had some kind of folk music act with singers doing so-called national music, which was horrible. Or, if the music was good, the singers were bad. So the people would go to the lobby, waiting for them to finish, and then they would go back to see the movie.' The young Schifrin bought his records from an American merchant marine skipper sailing from New Orleans. He would pay for the records in advance, then wait 40 days for their arrival. When he went down to the docks to collect his stash, he wore a long raincoat under which he could hide his latest acquisitions. 'In a way, I was smuggling records, but not for sale,' Schifrin said in 1996. 'They were for my own private collection.' Schifrin was born Boris Claudio Schifrin in Buenos Aires in 1932. His father, Luis, was the concertmaster for the Buenos Aires Philharmonic Orchestra, and the young Schifrin was exposed to the great classical composers from birth and classically trained on piano from a young age. Hearing Duke Ellington's music for the first time as a teen was, he said, 'like a religious conversion, and that conversion became more refined, focused and passionate when I discovered Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell'. He briefly studied law before going to France to study music at the Paris Conservatoire, where his teachers included the composer Olivier Messiaen, and he fell in love with the edgy sounds of the modern composers. Ironically, it was there that his love for Latin American music was kindled after he attended a lecture and workshop given by the Cuban composer and author Julio Gutiérrez, who had written a book entitled Mambology. It was also in Paris that he began playing jazz professionally. He said: 'I led a double life. I was a classical pianist during the day, and a jazz musician at night.' Returning to a post-Peron Argentina in 1956, he started a big band. Later that year, Gillespie's big band toured Argentina, and Schifrin's outfit was booked to play at a reception in his honour. Gillespie liked what he heard, asked the young Argentinian if he had written the arrangements for the band and suggested he work for him in the States. Schifrin and his first wife, Silvia, moved to New York in 1958. They divorced in 1970, and Schifrin is survived by his second wife Donna (née Cockrell) and his three children — William and Frances, from his first marriage, and Ryan, all of whom work in film and TV production. Aged 26, he composed Gillespiana — a five-movement suite based in part on baroque music forms and scored for a traditional big band minus saxophones, but augmented by four French horns, two percussionists and a tuba. With Schifrin on piano, Gillespie's band performed the piece throughout Europe and the United States. It established him as a composer who could elegantly blend classical music with jazz, and it was a logical step for him to head next to Hollywood, where Elmer Bernstein and Johnny Mandel were taking the same approach to movie scores. Among the early films he scored were Cool Hand Luke (1967) and Bullitt (1968), Kelly's Heroes (1970) and Enter the Dragon (1973), along with Dirty Harry (1971) and several of its sequels. But it was the suitably 'groovy' and exciting music he wrote for the TV series Mission: Impossible in 1966 which put him on the map. It was composed before the title credits were created, and the only inspiration the producers could offer was a cryptic instruction about a 'lit fuse'. Written with an unconventional 5/4 time signature it injected, he explained: 'A little humour and lightness that didn't take itself too seriously.' Thirty years later, when the show was turned into a blockbuster action film starring Tom Cruise, the star told him that retaining the original pulsating and suspenseful theme music had been a deal-breaker when he took on the project. Since that first Mission: Impossible movie in 1996, there have been a further seven films in the series — all with that 'earworm' Schifrin theme. The most recent was released this year and made almost £400 million worldwide. Alongside his film and TV work, he was kept busy with commissions, including the grand finale music for the 1990 World Cup Championship in Italy, when The Three Tenors — Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras — sang together for the first time. He worked with Carreras and the London Symphony Orchestra on the album Friends for Life in 1992, and again with the LSO on Symphonic Impressions of Oman, a piece commissioned by the Sultan of Oman and released on CD in 2003. He was in demand as a conductor with orchestras across the world, including the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra — which recorded his Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra, featuring the soloist Angel Romero, in 1984. In the late 1980s, he was musical director of the new Paris Philharmonic Orchestra, formed with the express purpose of recording music for films, performing concerts and participating in TV shows, and he operated as both pianist and conductor for the successful series of Jazz Meets the Symphony recordings, with the LPO, through the 1990s and early 2000s. Along the way, he also wrote compositions which added Latin American influences into the mix. 'People ask me how it is that I'm so 'versatile,'' he said in 1996. 'But I say, 'I'm not versatile. I just don't see limits. To me, all music is one music.' Lalo Schifrin, pianist, composer and conductor, was born on June 21, 1932. He died on June 26, 2025, aged 93
NBC News
2 hours ago
- NBC News
Lalo Schifrin, composer of the 'Mission: Impossible' theme, dies at 93
Lalo Schifrin, the composer who wrote the endlessly catchy theme for "Mission: Impossible" and more than 100 other arrangements for film and television, died Thursday. He was 93. Schifrin's son Ryan confirmed that Schifrin died due to complications from pneumonia. He died peacefully in his home in Los Angeles, surrounded by family. The Argentine won four Grammys and was nominated for six Oscars, including five for original score for "Cool Hand Luke," "The Fox," "Voyage of the Damned," "The Amityville Horror" and "The Sting II." "Every movie has its own personality. There are no rules to write music for movies," Schifrin told The Associated Press in 2018. "The movie dictates what the music will be." He also wrote the grand finale musical performance for the World Cup championship in Italy in 1990, in which the Three Tenors — Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and José Carreras — sang together for the first time. The work became one of the biggest sellers in the history of classical music. 'The most contagious tune ever heard' Schifrin, also a jazz pianist and classical conductor, had a remarkable career in music that included working with Dizzy Gillespie and recording with Count Basie and Sarah Vaughan. But perhaps his biggest contribution was the instantly recognizable score to television's "Mission: Impossible," which fueled the just-wrapped, decades-spanning feature film franchise led by Tom Cruise. Written in the unusual 5/4 time signature, the theme — Dum-dum DUM DUM dum-dum DUM DUM — was married to an on-screen self-destruct clock that kicked off the TV show, which ran from 1966 to 1973. It was described as "only the most contagious tune ever heard by mortal ears" by New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane and even hit No. 41 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968. Schifrin originally wrote a different piece of music for the theme song but series creator Bruce Geller liked another arrangement Schifrin had composed for an action sequence. "The producer called me and told me, 'You're going to have to write something exciting, almost like a logo, something that will be a signature, and it's going to start with a fuse,'" Schifrin told the AP in 2006. "So I did it and there was nothing on the screen. And maybe the fact that I was so free and I had no images to catch, maybe that's why this thing has become so successful — because I wrote something that came from inside me." When director Brian De Palma was asked to take the series to the silver screen, he wanted to bring the theme along with him, leading to a creative conflict with composer John Williams, who wanted to work with a new theme of his own. Out went Williams and in came Danny Elfman, who agreed to retain Schifrin's music. Hans Zimmer took over scoring for the second film, and Michael Giacchino scored the next two. Giacchino told NPR he was a hesitant to take it on, because Schifrin's music was one of his favorite themes of all time. "I remember calling Lalo and asking if we could meet for lunch," Giacchino told NPR. "And I was very nervous — I felt like someone asking a father if I could marry their daughter or something. And he said, 'Just have fun with it.' And I did." "Mission: Impossible" won Grammys for best instrumental theme and best original score from a motion picture or a TV show. In 2017, the theme was entered into the Grammy Hall of Fame. U2 members Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. covered the theme while making the soundtrack to 1996's first installment; that version peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard 200 with a Grammy nomination. A 2010 commercial for Lipton tea depicted a young Schifrin composing the theme at his piano while gaining inspiration through sips of the brand's Lipton Yellow Label. Musicians dropped from the sky as he added elements. Early life filled with music Born Boris Claudio Schifrin to a Jewish family in Buenos Aires — where his father was the concertmaster of the philharmonic orchestra — Schifrin was classically trained in music, in addition to studying law. After studying at the Paris Conservatory — where he learned about harmony and composition from the legendary Olivier Messiaen — Schifrin returned to Argentina and formed a concert band. Gillespie heard Schifrin perform and asked him to become his pianist, arranger and composer. In 1958, Schifrin moved to the United States, playing in Gillespie's quintet in 1960-62 and composing the acclaimed "Gillespiana." The long list of luminaries he performed and recorded with includes Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, Dee Dee Bridgewater and George Benson. He also worked with such classical stars as Zubin Mehta, Mstislav Rostropovich, Daniel Barenboim and others. Schifrin moved easily between genres, winning a Grammy for 1965's "Jazz Suite on the Mass Texts" while also earning a nod that same year for the score of TV's "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." In 2018, he was given an honorary Oscar statuette and, in 2017, the Latin Recording Academy bestowed on him one of its special trustee awards. Later film scores included "Tango," "Rush Hour" and its two sequels, "Bringing Down The House," "The Bridge of San Luis Rey," "After the Sunset" and the horror film "Abominable." Writing the arrangements for "Dirty Harry," Schifrin decided that the main character wasn't in fact Clint Eastwood's hero, Harry Callahan, but the villain, Scorpio. "You would think the composer would pay more attention to the hero. But in this case, no, I did it to Scorpio, the bad guy, the evil guy," he told the AP. "I wrote a theme for Scorpio." It was Eastwood who handed him his honorary Oscar. "Receiving this honorary Oscar is the culmination of a dream," Schifrin said at the time. "It is mission accomplished." Beyond film and TV Among Schifrin's conducting credits include the London Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, the Mexico Philharmonic, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. He was appointed music director of Southern California's Glendale Symphony Orchestra and served in that capacity from 1989-1995. Schifrin also wrote and adapted the music for "Christmas in Vienna" in 1992, a concert featuring Diana Ross, Carreras and Domingo. He also combined tango, folk and classical genres when he recorded "Letters from Argentina," nominated for a Latin Grammy for best tango album in 2006. Schifrin was also commissioned to write the overture for the 1987 Pan American Games, and composed and conducted the event's 1995 final performance in Argentina. And for perhaps one of the only operas performed in the ancient Indigenous language of Nahuatl, in 1988 Schifrin wrote and conducted the choral symphony "Songs of the Aztecs." The work premiered at Mexico's Teotihuacan pyramids with Domingo as part of a campaign to raise money to restore the site's Aztec temple. "I found it to be a very sweet musical language, one in which the sounds of the words dictated interesting melodies," Schifrin told The Associated Press at the time. "But the real answer is that there's something magic about it. ... There's something magic in the art of music anyway." He's survived by his sons, Ryan and William, daughter, Frances, and wife, Donna.
