Michael Kamen

Born in New York City in 1948, Michael Kamen went on to earn Oscar nominations across his roles as composer, conductor, and arranger. While enrolled in oboe studies at the Juilliard School of Music, he simultaneously performed with a jug band. He assembled the New York Rock & Roll Ensemble, whose classical-pop blend so struck conductor Leonard Bernstein that the ensemble received an invitation to one of his Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. The group issued five albums between 1968 and 1972 before it disbanded. In 1973 the Harkness Ballet asked Kamen to compose the score for its production Rodin Mis en Vie, after which he worked as musical director on David Bowie's Diamond Dogs tour. His first feature-film assignment arrived in 1976 with The Next Man, yet his Hollywood profile rose sharply in the mid-1980s through his widely praised contribution to Terry Gilliam's Brazil. Commercial success followed with 1987's Lethal Weapon, on which he collaborated with Eric Clapton; he remained attached to both that franchise and the Die Hard series through their numerous sequels. Kamen received his initial Academy Award nomination in 1991 for the Bryan Adams hit "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You," featured in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and co-written with Adams and Robert John "Mutt" Lange. The song collected two Grammys, prompting the same trio to reconvene in 1993 for "All for Love," performed by Adams, Sting, and Rod Stewart. In 1999 Kamen conducted the orchestra that accompanied Metallica on its S&M project. The next year brought the premiere of his millennial symphony The New Moon in the Old Moon's Arms, a work commissioned by Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony Orchestra. Kamen died suddenly of a heart attack on November 18, 2003, at the age of 55.