by Jason Drury
Lalo Schifrin has always been there.
Schifrin, who passed away on the 27th June 2025 aged 93, did not have the cultish fandom as some of his contemporaries of the same era, but his work in the film and TV industry has always been regarded with love and respect from all film music fans and collectors.
Boris Claudio Schifrin’s works included such memorable score for movies such as Cool Hand Luke (1967) , Bullitt (1968) and Enter The Dragon (1973), each showcasing his ability to integrate different musical genres into the orchestral pallet like bluegrass, jazz, and oriental timbres. It was his jazz background that helped his collaboration with Clint Eastwood blossom with memorable scores such as Coogan’s Bluff (1968), moving on to his iconic work on Dirty Harry (1971) and three of it’s sequels. Other works like The Beguiled (1971) and Joe Kidd (1972) helped forment their relationship.
Schifrin was also up to the task with full blown orchestral scores. The Eagle Has Landed (1976), The Amityville Horror (1979), Airport 79 The Concorde (1979), and The Fourth Protocol (1987) and though not box office successes, were musical highlights. Other scores like THX-1138 (1971) for George Lucas allowed Schifrin to experiment in his musical style.
In the world of the small screen Schifrin was always reliable to come up with a killer theme tune. Most Wanted (1976), Mannix (1967), and the TV version of Planet of the Apes (1974) produced memorable themes from the composer, as well as the first season of Starsky and Hutch (1975). But it was his theme for the classic spy adventure series Mission: Impossible (1966) which is his best known work. Even those who did not watch the series , or the Tom Cruise movies, are able able to recognise that iconic theme, written in the uncommon 5/4 time signature. The meter (dash dash, dot dot) is Morse Code for the letters M and I.
Away from film and TV, Schifrin was equally prolific collaborating with such luminaries as Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz. He wrote many of the arrangements for The Three Tenors concerts in the 1990s, including ‘Nessa Dorma’ for Luciano Pavarotti, and he wrote concert pieces including ‘Symphonic Impressions of Oman’ and ‘Return of the Marquis De Sade’.
Schifrin was a five-time Grammy Award winner and was nominated for six Academy Awards and four Emmy Awards. In 2019, he received an Honorary Academy Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in recognition of his successful career.
On announcing the composer’s death online, the BBC headline was ‘Mission Impossible theme composer, Lalo Schifrin, dies at 93′ as if Schifrin had done nothing else in his career. This was further from the truth as it was possible, and, with his 226 composer credits to his name according to the IMDB, Lalo Schifrin’s contribution to the genre of film and TV has been immense and he will continue to be a name which will command respect from present and future composers and fans of film music in general.
Lalo Schifrin’s music will always continue to be there.