Cliff Martinez

Having adeptly shifted from serving as a high-profile percussionist in rock outfits to earning Grammy recognition for scoring motion pictures, Cliff Martinez performed alongside Captain Beefheart, Lydia Lunch, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers across the 1970s and 1980s before aligning more closely with characteristically unsettling, keyboard-driven soundtracks for features including Sex, Lies & Videotape (1989), Traffic (2000), and Drive (2011). Frequent work with director Steven Soderbergh began when Martinez entered the field via Sex, Lies & Videotape, itself the filmmaker’s first feature. Their eleventh joint project arrived with the television series The Knick (2014-2015). Expanding into interactive entertainment, Martinez received a BAFTA Games Award for scoring the 2014 installment Far Cry 4. Additional partnerships with director Nicolas Winding Refn encompass Drive and the 2019 miniseries Too Old to Die Young.

Although born in the Bronx, New York in 1954 and raised in Columbus, Ohio, Martinez relocated to California in 1976 precisely as the punk scene gained momentum. Following drumming stints with Captain Beefheart, Lydia Lunch, and the Dickies, he joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers as a replacement for Jack Irons, who had departed with Hillel Slovak to focus on What Is This. Martinez appeared on the band’s self-titled 1984 debut and its 1985 successor Freaky Styley, yet he was dismissed by Anthony Kiedis and Flea during sessions for 1987’s The Uplift Mofo Party Plan on the grounds that his commitment had waned—an assessment Martinez himself accepted.

Redirecting his energies toward scoring for television and film, Martinez’s initial assignment on the children’s program Pee Wee’s Playhouse drew the notice of Steven Soderbergh, who commissioned music for the 1989 independent drama Sex, Lies & Videotape. That picture earned widespread critical praise and an Oscar nomination for Soderbergh’s screenplay. Martinez next supplied the soundtrack for the radio-centric teen film Pump Up the Volume, after which the collaborators reconvened for 1991’s Kafka, the 1993 drama King of the Hill, and the 1995 thriller The Underneath. Further joint releases with Soderbergh included the 1996 arthouse comedies Schizopolis and Gray’s Anatomy. Martinez worked with a different director on the 1998 thriller Wicked before rejoining Soderbergh for 1999’s The Limey and the director’s highest-grossing release to that point, 2000’s Traffic. A Best Picture nominee that secured four Oscars, including Soderbergh’s for direction, the film also brought Martinez a Grammy nomination for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.

The pair next delivered Soderbergh’s remake of the Andrei Tarkovsky feature Solaris in 2002, after which nearly a decade passed without collaboration while Martinez scored primarily modest crime dramas and thrillers such as 2003’s Wonderland, 2005’s Havoc, and the 2009 France-U.K. co-production Spy(ies). His contributions to the 2009 French drama In the Beginning (À l’Origine) earned a César nomination. In 2011 Martinez experienced one of his strongest commercial years since Traffic, with releases of the Michael Connelly adaptation The Lincoln Lawyer, the Nicolas Winding Refn-directed crime film Drive, and the virus thriller Contagion marking his first Soderbergh project in nine years. Drive attracted considerable notice within soundtrack circles for its sleek synthesizer textures. Scores the following year included music for the Robert Redford thriller The Company You Keep. Also in 2012, Martinez entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

A further collaboration with Winding Refn, Only God Forgives, appeared in 2013. The year 2014 brought both the Martinez-scored video game Far Cry 4 and the debut season of the Soderbergh-directed Cinemax series The Knick. Martinez remained the program’s principal composer throughout its two-season run. He rejoined Winding Refn for the horror film The Neon Demon and scored Todd Phillips’ War Dogs, both released in 2016, then composed the music for the Jackie Chan vehicle The Foreigner in 2017. His scores for Game Night, Den of Thieves, and Hotel Artemis all reached theaters the next year. Returning once more to Winding Refn, 2019’s Too Old to Die Young was released as an Amazon crime-fantasy series; like The Knick, it appeared on a Milan soundtrack album.