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Marvin Hamlisch
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Since he first emerged in the mid-'70s, Marvin Hamlisch has been one of the top composers in film, theater, and popular music. As holder of numerous gold record awards for his soundtrack and cast recordings, and the composer of some of the most well-known songs ever cut by Barbra Streisand and Lesley Gore, among many others, he is among the few "stars" in the world of popular music, composition, and songwriting to achieve major public recognition since the emergence of rock music in the '60s. Born in New York in 1944, Marvin Hamlisch grew up on Manhattan's Upper West Side. His father was an accordionist and bandleader specializing in dance music and Hamlisch showed a fascination with music at an early age. At age 5, Hamlisch was mimicking the music he heard on the radio on the piano, and he began lessons a year later. At age 7, he auditioned for the Juilliard School of Music by transcribing the then-current hit "Goodnight Irene" into different keys spontaneously, on demand from the panel judging him.
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Born in New York to a musical family, Marvin Hamlisch was something of a child prodigy. He began to mimic songs he heard on the piano at age five, and just before his seventh birthday, he became the youngest person ever admitted to the Julliard School. It looked liked he was destined to become a concert pianist, but his anxiety about performing led him away from that career and towards a career as a composer.
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A child prodigy, Marvin Hamlisch began studying piano at the famed Juilliard School of Music when he was seven. He co-wrote his first hit song, the bouncy "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows" which Lesley Gore recorded and made a hit in 1965. He subsequently co-wrote another of Gore's hits 1967's "California Nights". By this time, Hamlisch had already made in-roads into showbiz. In 1960, through a friend, he was introduced to Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli and he played piano at a party hosted by Garland. Within four years, he was hired as the rehearsal pianist for the Jule Styne-Robert Merrill musical "Funny Girl" (1964), where Hamlisch first met Barbra Streisand. After serving as vocal arranger on TV's "The Bell Telephone Hour" (where he collaborated with such stars as Lena Horne and Tony Bennett), Hamlisch got his first break as a film composer through a fluke.
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In 2000, Marvin Hamlisch assumed the same position with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC. This is the first time that anyone has held such a position with this orchestra. Mr. Hamlisch was Musical Director and Arranger of Barbra Streisand's 1994 concert tour of the U.S. and England as well as of the television special, " Barbra Streisand : The Concert" (for which he received two of his Emmys). He served in the same capacities for her Millenium concerts. One of the youngest students ever admitted to The Juilliard School, Hamlisch is a graduate of both Juilliard and Queens College (where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree). Marvin Hamlisch believes in the power of music to bring people together.
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According to his Wikipedia entry, Marvin Hamlisch was born in New York June 2, 1944 and he's the first person to win 3 Academy Awards in one night. The Internet Movie Database lists over seventy TV shows and films which Hamlisch composed for. These have included music for hit movies The Sting in 1973, Sophie's Choice in 1982, A Streetcar Named Desire in 1984 and A Chorus Line in 1985. He ... has won just about every major award that exists. His resume of awards achieved includes three Oscars, four Grammys, four Emmys, a Tony and three Golden Globe awards. His groundbreaking Broadway show, A Chorus Line, received the Pulitzer Prize in 1976 and was one of the longest running shows in theatre history with 6,137 performances.
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In his teens, Hamlisch's performing talent seemed to beckon a career in the concert hall, but he proved psychologically unsuited to being a concert pianist, owing to terrible anxiety that proved difficult to overcome as a boy. He turned instead to composition, an activity that he had always pursued privately. While still at Juilliard, he worked as a music counselor at an upstate camp, where some of his songs were performed; one of the songs he originally wrote for a show at the camp, "Travelin' Man," was recorded by Liza Minnelli on her debut album. However, Hamlisch's first hit came when he was 21 years old, from Lesley Gore, in the form of "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows," which rode the Billboard charts for 11 weeks in 1965, peaking at number 13. (The song, in Lesley Gore's version, later figured prominently in a Simpsons episode parodying the film Thelma & Louise when the police chief puts some chase music on in his cruiser).
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Marvin Hamlisch