Lalo Schifrin, Prolific Composer, Passes Away At 93

Composer Lalo Schifrin, who wrote hundreds of acclaimed scores for film and television shows, including one for Mission: Impossible, died on June 26, 2025 of complications from pneumonia, aged 93.

Schifrin created stylish, atmospheric scores for celebrated films such as Patton, Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, Once a Thief, Dirty Harry, The Cincinnati Kid, Enter the Dragon, and The Amityville Horror.

The Argentine, who was born Boris Claudio Schifrin on June 21, 1932 in Buenos Aires, had a glittering career in Hollywood but was also a noted figure in the jazz world. He was the arranger for numerous leading jazz musicians, including Dizzy Gillespie, and worked with talents such as Ella Fitzgerald. Schifrin was equally at home writing a classical concerto for the tuba as he was an ensemble for a modern jazz band. “Its all music to me,” he said, joking that mixing jazz and classical was like being “the Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde” of composing.

His education in music started early, with his violinist father Luis Schifrin, the concertmaster of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Buenos Aires, sending him to piano lessons at the age of five. After a spell studying law and sociology, he left his homeland in 1952 to study composition at the Paris Conservatoire for three years. At the age of 23, he represented his country at the International Jazz Festival in Paris. He also spent time in London in the early 1950s, playing with jazz musicians such as Tubby Hayes.

When he returned to Argentina in 1955, he formed his own 16-piece concert band. “It was the first modern jazz orchestra in all of South America. We did tours, playing a repertoire of themes by people like Horace Silver,” Schifrin recalled.

It was during a performance of this band that he came to the attention of trumpet player and bandleader Gillespie. “Dizzy Gillespie, who was a hero of mine, heard me playing the piano and asked me if I wrote the arrangements,” recalled Schifrin. “When I said I did, he asked me to join his band. I thought I was dreaming, that it was a joke. But that’s why I ended up in America.” He joined a band that included Quincy Jones.

Schifrin loved playing jazz. He had grown up with a love of Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong, learning their music by ear and playing the melodies and harmonies over and over to memorize the music. He went on to perform and record with modern jazz greats such as Count Basie, Cannonball Adderley, Freddie Hubbard, Louie Bellson, Shelly Manne and Kenny Burrell. As he once told pianist Oscar Peterson, “once a jazz musician, always a jazz musician.”

He was also the arranger on some notable jazz albums for Verve Records, including with Stan Getz (Reflections), Jimmy Smith (The Cat), Dizzy Gillespie (Gillespiana) and Cal Tjader (Several Shades of Jade), and worked on the ambitious 1966 blend of classical and swing, which was entitled The Dissection and Reconstruction of Music from the Past as Performed by the Inmates of Lalo Schifrin’s Demented Ensemble as a Tribute to the Memory of the Marquis De Sade. The album went on to earn a Grammy nomination.

Schifrin earned 21 Grammy nominations in all – winning four times, including for his album with jazz organ maestro Smith. However, his Grammy win for the Mission: Impossible music was the most notable. He remained pleased with the enduring appeal of this iconic theme tune, which was commissioned with the instruction “write something exciting.” Schifrin said that he liked the later film adaptations and said: “Tom Cruise said to me that he grew up with Mission: Impossible and the music was one of the biggest elements that convinced him to get involved in the project, not only as an actor but as producer. So he made my day.”

In 1988, Schifrin was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and he received six Oscar nominations. They were for Cool Hand Luke (1967); The Fox (1967); Voyage of the Damned (1976); The Amityville Horror (1979); The Competition (1980), and The Sting II (1983). In 2018, it was actor Clint Eastwood who handed him his honorary Oscar. “Receiving this honorary Oscar is the culmination of a dream,” Schifrin said. “It is mission accomplished.”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences paid tribute to the musician’s “genius” compositions which “built tension, ignited adrenaline and gave stories their pulse.” “We’ll forever remember the composer who turned every beat into a thrill, and every silence into suspense,” the organization said in a post on X.

Schifrin lived for most of his later life in Beverly Hills, in a house formerly owned by Groucho Marx. “Groucho rang the bell one day and he introduced himself, wanting to have a look round,” he recalled. During the time he lived in Los Angeles, he took on the role of permanent conductor and musical director of Glendale Symphony Orchestra. In 1989, he was commissioned to write the grand finale music for the 1990 World Cup Finals in Italy. The concert, performed by the three tenors Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras, became a global hit record.

Schifrin continued working for Hollywood in the 1990s, including composing for the film Tango and during that decade he also continued his role “as a chameleon mixer of sounds” by recording a series of orchestral jazz albums called Jazz Meets the Symphony.

In his seventies, Schifrin continued to take occasional movie commissions. He wrote the music for Rush Hour and Rush Hour 2 and Bringing the House Down and in 2006 scored the film Abominable, which was directed by his son Ryan. In 2015, at the age of 83, the man whose music was rejected for The Exorcist because his score was “too dark,” wrote the main theme for the movie Tales of Halloween.

Schifrin is one of the most important composers in film history and he leaves a remarkable body of work. He was asked once what music brought to life and replied: “We all share humanity. I love the possibility I can touch somebody with my music. The purpose of music is to get to the emotions of people.”