In 1956, Dizzy Gillespie was visiting Buenos Aires as part of a State Department-sponsored tour when he discovered pianist Lalo Schifrin. According to The Washington Post‘s Tim Greiving, Gillespie “found himself dazzled by the young pianist.”
Schifrin, who died June 26, 2025, in Los Angeles at the age of 93, described what happened in Gillespie’s book, To Be, or not . . . to Bop (Doubleday & Company: 1979), written with Al Fraser. “Dizzy came with one of the best big bands in the history of jazz. I had a band in Argentina myself . . . We played for him, after hours . . . The style of my band was in between Dizzy and the Basie tradition. Dizzy liked it, and when he played, he offered me to come to the United States as an arranger-pianist. I didn’t believe it, you know. I didn’t think he meant it. He said, ‘When you come over there, look me up.'”
In 1960, Schifrin arrived in the U.S. and contacted Gillespie, who asked, “Where you been?”, offered Schifrin a job as his quintet’s pianist, and commissioned him to write what became the five-part suite, “Gillespiana”, recorded by Gillespie for the Verve label. Said Schifrin, “That was the turning point. I wouldn’t be here if that didn’t happen.” (Photo above: Schifrin, right, and Gillespie on the cover of their 1979 Pablo album, Free Ride). ).
Schifrin wrote another suite for Gillespie, “New Continent”, in 1962 and also composed and arranged for such other Verve artists as Stan Getz and Sarah Vaughan.
In 1963, Schifrin left Gillespie and moved to Los Angeles to begin writing movie soundtracks for such films as The Cincinnati Kid starring Steve McQueen and Cool Hand Luke with Paul Newman. He also wrote scores and themes for TV series, among them Mannix and Medical Center.
The actor/producer Clint Eastwood, himself a jazz fan, related to Schifrin’s music, and the two collaborated on several Eastwood films including Coogan’s Bluff, Dirty Harry and its sequels, and Joe Kidd.
Other composers, such as Henry Mancini and Johnny Mandel, had used jazz in movie and TV scores, but according to The Post‘s Greiving, “Mr. Schjfrin was credited with bringing a jazz-symphonic fusion to the craft. By 1969, Time Magazine was calling him ‘the most inventive composer of movie scores in the business,” noting his “deft jazz touch” and “Latinesque” blues style.
Between 1992 and 2011, Schifrin released a series of albums called Jazz Meets the Symphony with groups such as the London Symphony Orchestra playing the music of Duke Ellington and Miles Davis, accompanied by a jazz band. He won five Grammy Awards and was nominated for six Oscars. In 2018, he was awarded an Honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement, presented to him by Eastwood. In 2008, he had published his autobiography, Mission Impossible: My Life in Music (Scarecrow Press).
Schifrin is survived by his wife, Donna and their son, Ryan; and by a son, William, and a daughter, Frances, from his first marriage to Sylvia Schor.