Boris Claudio "Lalo" Schifrin (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈlalo ˈʃifɾin]; June 21, 1932 – June 26, 2025) was an Argentine and American pianist, composer, arranger and conductor. Initially prominent as a jazz composer, he was best known for his large body of film and television scores, which incorporates jazz and Latin American musical elements alongside traditional orchestration.
Schifrin's best known compositions include the themes from T.H.E. Cat (1966), Mission: Impossible (1966) and Mannix (1967), as well as the scores to Cool Hand Luke (1967), Bullitt (1968), THX 1138 (1971), Enter the Dragon (1973), The Four Musketeers (1974), Voyage of the Damned (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), The Amityville Horror (1979) and the Rush Hour trilogy (1998–2007). Schifrin was also noted for collaborations with Clint Eastwood from the late 1960s to the 1980s, particularly the Dirty Harry film series. He composed the Paramount Pictures fanfare used from 1976 to 2004.
Schifrin was a five-time Grammy Award winner; he was nominated for six Academy Awards (five for Best Original Score and once for Best Original Song) and four Emmy Awards. In 2019, he received an Honorary Academy Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in recognition of his successful career.
Life and career
Early life and education
Schifrin was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on June 21, 1932 as Boris Claudio. The nickname "Lalo" was the normal Argentine diminutive for his second name, Claudio. When he came to the U.S., he changed his name to Lalo legally to simplify his contracts.
His father, Luis Schifrin, led the second violin section of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic for three decades. At the age of six, Schifrin began a six-year course of study on piano with Enrique Barenboim, the father of pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim. Schifrin began studying piano with the Greek-Russian expatriate Andrea Karalin, the onetime head of the Kiev Conservatory and harmony with Juan Carlos Paz.
1956–1963: Jazz composer
After returning to Argentina in his twenties, Schifrin formed a jazz big band
Schifrin's "Tar Sequence" from his Cool Hand Luke score (written in ) was the longtime theme for the Eyewitness News broadcasts on New York station WABC-TV and other ABC affiliates, as well as Nine News in Australia; it was used into the 1990s. The jazzy 'Bullitt score for this Peter Yates directed film was recorded in December of the same year. In 1973 he incorporated funk and traditional film score elements into soundtrack for the Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon. He composed the score by sampling sounds from China, Korea, and Japan. The soundtrack has sold more than 500,000 copies, earning a gold record.
Schifrin's working score for 1973's The Exorcist was rejected by the film's director, William Friedkin. As reported by Schifrin in an interview, Warner Bros. executives told Friedkin to instruct Schifrin to tone it down with softer music, but Friedkin did not relay the message. – ref lost--> He later reused the compositions in other scores.
Shifrin also composed the 1976 fanfare for Paramount Pictures, which was used mainly for their home video label and was adapted for the television division 11 years later until it was renamed to CBS Paramount Television (now CBS Studios) in 2006. In 1981 he wrote the music for the slapstick comedy film Caveman. From 1982 to 1995, he collaborated with Gary Stockdale on many films including The Osterman Weekend, Doctor Detroit, Sudden Impact, F/X2, Black Moon Rising, and Two Billion Hearts.
He founded Aleph Records in 1998. He is widely sampled in hip-hop and trip-hop songs including Heltah Skeltah's "Prowl" and Portishead's "Sour Times". Both songs sample Schifrin's "Danube Incident", one of many themes he composed for specific episodes of the Mission: Impossible TV series. In 2003, Schifrin was commissioned to compose a classical work entitled Symphonic Impressions of Oman by Sultan Qaboos bin Said.<!-- this ref has only that a recording exists but not the story--><!-- The Sultan himself was particularly enthusiastic about the pipe organ and an avid classical music fan. – fact not supported by the ref--> In 2004, he wrote the main theme for Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, a stealth game published by Ubisoft.
On April 23, 2007, Schifrin presented a concert of film music for the Festival du Film Jules Verne Aventures (Festival Jules Verne), at Le Grand Rex theatre in Paris–Europe's biggest movie theater. It was recorded by festival leaders for a CD named Lalo Schifrin: Le Concert à Paris. In 2010, a fictionalized account of Lalo Schifrin's creation of the "Theme from Mission: Impossible" tune was featured in a Lipton TV commercial aired in a number of countries around the world.
After Rod Schejtman won the 2024 Vienna WorldVision Composers Contest, Schifrin in 2024 invited him to jointly compose a symphony dedicated to their country. They composed a 35-minute symphony in three movements, subtitled "Long Live Freedom",--> and fused cinematic and classical elements. The symphony premiered at the Teatro Colón on April 5, 2025. The marriage ended in divorce. He said: