Lalo Schifrin

Recognized for earning Oscar and Emmy nominations as a film and television composer, while also pursuing classical composition and building acclaim as a jazz pianist, Lalo Schifrin earned widespread recognition for the tense, jazz-infused music he created for movies and television programs. He first rose to prominence as a big-band leader during the middle of the 1950s, working alongside figures such as Dizzy Gillespie and Xavier Cugat prior to taking on film-scoring assignments in the mid-1960s. The memorable theme he wrote for the television series Mission: Impossible made its debut on air in 1966. Echoing the approach established by John Barry and Monty Norman in the “James Bond Theme,” the piece relied on orchestral jazz textures—featuring prominent flutes, brass, piano, bongos, and jazz drums—paired with driving staccato and syncopated rhythms that shaped the sound of spy music for many years afterward. Comparable to peers including Michel Legrand, Henry Mancini, and André Previn, Schifrin composed across multiple genres yet remained identified above all with his jazz-tinged scores. Among these were crime pictures such as 1968’s Bullitt, which established an urban atmosphere through a sizable jazz group that incorporated electric guitar and electric bass, as well as the Dirty Harry series spanning 1971 to 1988. Although broader in scope, the Dirty Harry soundtracks preserved a restless jazz approach while gradually refreshing their sonic palette with additional keyboards, strings, and rock-oriented drumming. Once his Mission: Impossible theme was adapted for a theatrical revival in the mid-1990s, Schifrin blended jazz, rock, and sweeping orchestral elements in his energetic scores for the Rush Hour action series during the late 1990s and 2000s. More than five decades after its original appearance, the same Mission: Impossible theme figured prominently in Lorne Balfe’s contributions to the seventh installment of the film franchise, 2023’s Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Pt. 1.

Born Boris Claudio Schifrin in Buenos Aires in 1932, he was raised by a father who performed on violin with the Teatro Colón Orchestra. At the age of six, Lalo began piano lessons arranged by his father with Enrique Barenboim, the father of renowned pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim. During his teenage years, he studied piano under Andreas Karalis, former director of the Kiev Conservatory, and harmony with composer Juan Carlos Paz. After securing a scholarship to the Paris Conservatory in the early 1950s, he trained with French composers Charles Koechlin and Olivier Messiaen. In his spare time he performed in Parisian jazz venues, and in 1955 he represented Argentina at the Paris International Jazz Festival. Upon returning to Buenos Aires, he formed his own sixteen-piece Basie-style jazz ensemble, the first of its kind in the country, while also working as a pianist and arranger. His standing as a bandleader facilitated an introduction to Dizzy Gillespie in 1956, prompting Schifrin to propose composing a suite for him. He finished the five-movement Gillespiana in 1958, the same year he joined Xavier Cugat as an arranger. In 1960 Schifrin relocated to New York City and became a member of Gillespie’s quintet, which recorded Gillespiana to considerable praise. He served as Gillespie’s musical director until 1962, supplying another suite titled The New Continent before stepping down to focus on his own compositions. Schifrin undertook his initial American film-scoring project in 1963 with Rhino! and settled in Hollywood, where he soon carved out a place composing for both television and cinema. During this period he also created pieces reflecting his jazz-classical fusion approach, among them the 1963 ballet Jazz Faust and 1965’s Jazz Suite on the Mass Texts.

After establishing himself through episodes of series such as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Schifrin joined the music staff of the spy program Mission: Impossible. The show premiered on CBS in 1966 and showcased his memorable 5/4 instrumental “Theme from Mission: Impossible,” a piece that would continue appearing in television-music anthologies for years. A year later he delivered his theme for Mannix, at a time when he was gaining notice for his jazz-oriented scores to prominent crime films including Cool Hand Luke (1967) and Bullitt (1968). His first Academy Award nomination arrived for Cool Hand Luke, followed by a second the next year for the D.H. Lawrence drama The Fox. In 1968 Schifrin scored the Don Siegel-directed Coogan’s Bluff starring Clint Eastwood. He rejoined the same director and star for 1971’s Dirty Harry and subsequently composed music for four of the five remaining entries in the franchise, which ran through the 1980s (Jerry Fielding handled 1976’s The Enforcer). Throughout those years he also created scores for an array of films such as the 1974 psychological thriller Man on a Swing, the 1976 war drama Voyage of the Damned (his third Oscar nomination), Disney’s 1978 release The Cat from Outer Space, and the 1979 horror landmark The Amityville Horror (his fourth Oscar nomination). Two further Academy Award nominations came in the 1980s for The Competition (1980) and The Sting II (1983).

Even as he maintained a steady output for film and television, Schifrin redirected greater attention toward classical projects in the 1990s, a period that included the first three installments of an orchestral jazz series titled Jazz Meets the Symphony. He additionally arranged substantial portions of the music for the initial three concerts featuring the Three Tenors. In 1996 his Mission: Impossible theme reached new audiences when it was adapted for a sequence of films headlined by Tom Cruise. U2’s Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, Jr. crafted a dance rendition of the theme that climbed into the Top Ten on the singles charts in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Continuing to supply original film music, Schifrin began in 1998 to furnish playful orchestral scores for the first three entries in the Rush Hour series starring Jackie Chan.

Schifrin remained active in Hollywood into his seventies, providing music for projects such as the crime film After the Sunset and the horror picture Abominable (directed by his son Ryan Schifrin), along with Rush Hour 3 in the 2000s. The third, fourth, and fifth Mission: Impossible films appeared during the 2010s, as did the Schifrin-scored romantic comedy Love Story (2011) and the basketball biopic Sweetwater (2016). He received an honorary Oscar in 2018. The Mission: Impossible franchise retained its strong appeal into the following decade, with Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Pt. 1 reaching theaters in mid-2023.