Elliot Goldenthal

About

Composer Elliot B Goldenthal has created works for orchestra, theatre, opera and film. He has received two Oscar® and two Golden Globe nominations for his scores for Interview with a Vampire (1996) and Michael Collins (1996); GRAMMY nominations for A Time to Kill (1996) and Batman Forever (1995); and three nominations for the Chicago Film Critics Award for Heat (1987), Michael Collins (1996) and The Butcher Boy (1998). In 1998 Goldenthal was honored with the prestigious L.A. Film Critics Award for Best Original Score for his outstanding work on Neil Jordan's critically acclaimed The Butcher Boy. Recently released on Sony Classical is Goldenthal's soundtrack for Julie Taymor's Titus (SK 89171), starring Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange.

Goldenthal's large scale symphonic piece, Fire Paper Water, a commemorative tribute created for the 20th anniversary of the Vietnam War, commissioned by the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, was released in April 1996 on Sony Classical, and features soloist Yo-Yo Ma. The piece received its East Coast debut with Seiji Ozawa conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra in critically acclaimed performances in Boston, in New York at Carnegie Hall and at the Kennedy Center.

For his 1988 collaboration with director Julie Taymor, Juan Darien - A Carnival Mass, he received two Obie Awards. The popular, critically acclaimed theatrical oratorio was based on the short story of Horacio Quiroga and the Requiem Mass. First performed in New York City, it subsequently toured festivals in Edinburgh, France, Jerusalem, Montreal and San Francisco, garnering the American Arts and Letters Richard Rogers Award and the Critics Choice Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 1990.

That same year, Goldenthal was commissioned by ASCAP to compose a work in celebration of Leonard Bernstein's 70th birthday. The piece, Shadow Play Scherzo, was performed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra at Town Hall in New York City. Later that year, he was commissioned to compose a new work for the Haydn-Mozart Chamber Orchestra commemorating the 75th anniversary of Ebbets Field. Titled Pastime Variations, it was performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

His other stage credits include the musical The Transposed Heads, based on Thomas Mann's novella, performed at Lincoln Center Theater and the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia; The King Stag, at the American Repertory Theater; and the musical Liberty's Taken produced at the Castle Hill Festival. Goldenthal has also composed incidental music for Shakespeare's The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus and A Mid summer Night's Dream.

He most recently collaborated again with director Taymor on the highly successful limited New York engagement of the Carlo Gozzi fable The Green Bird which was presented by The Theatre For A New Audience at the New Victory Theatre. This production reopened at the La Jolla Playhouse in July 1996.

For the concert stage Goldenthal was commissioned by the American Ballet Theatre to write a full length ballet of Othello, which debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in May 1997. Othello was choreographed by Lar Lubovitch and was one of the most acclaimed events of the 1997 dance season.

Goldenthal, a student of Aaron Copland and John Corigliano, earned both his Bachelor's and Masters Degree in musical composition at the Manhattan School of Music. He has written extensively for full orchestra as well as chamber and vocal compositions and is published by G. Schirmer. His other awards include the Arturo Toscanini Award, the New Music for Young Ensembles composition prize, the Stephen Sondheim Award in Music Theater and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship.

His other film scores include Neil Jordan's In Dreams, Sphere, Barry Levinson's Batman & Robin, Alien 3, Cobb starring Tommy Lee Jones, Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy and Fool's Fire directed by Julie Taymor for American Playhouse.

Goldenthal's upcoming projects are the Broadway production of The Green Bird, opening in April this year, and an opera based on the Old English epic poem, Beowulf, called Grandal.

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