Composer's Details
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BiographyDavid Spear, American composer, conductor and pianist, graduated from UCLA and was awarded the prestigious Henry Mancini Scholarship. He began his music career orchestrating scores for legendary film composer Elmer Bernstein. Spear's orchestrations can be heard in the films: Airplane!, Ghostbusters, Animal House and Heavy Metal. In New York City, after his Broadway debut as music Director of Merlin, the Magical Musical, Spear composed scores for three Academy Award Nominated films: Rainbow War, The Courage to Care and Ballet Robotique. He also wrote the music for the Emmy Award winning documentary Surviving Everest for National Geographic. He has led the Royal Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the Munich Philharmonic and the Vancouver Symphony in recordings of his own works. Since 1991, Spear has served on the faculties of Berklee College of music, New York University and the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music. In 2005, he was awarded the USC Casden Institute Faculty Research Grant to re-score Samuel Goldwyn's 1922 Classic Yiddish Silent Film Hungry Hearts. The new score with the restored film premiered in January 2007 at the New York Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center. |