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Thomas Newman

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Thomas Newman

Thomas Montgomery Newman (born October 20, 1955 in Los Angeles, California) is an American Academy Award-nominated film score composer. He is a member of a film-scoring dynasty in Hollywood that includes his father Alfred Newman, his uncle Lionel Newman, his brother David Newman, and his cousins Joey Newman and Randy Newman (who is best known as a singer and songwriter).

Newman was educated at Yale University, and began his film-scoring career in 1984 with his score for Reckless. His breakthrough came in 1994, when he earned two Academy Award nominations for his scores to Little Women and The Shawshank Redemption; he was the only double-nominee that year. His critical and commercial success has continued in recent years with his scores for American Beauty (winner of the Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media), Road to Perdition, Finding Nemo, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events and The Good German.

Newman has composed music for television as well, including theme music for the series Boston Public and the miniseries Angels in America. His theme music for the television show Six Feet Under won two Grammy Awards in 2003, for Best Instrumental Composition as well as Best Instrumental Arrangement. Newman also wrote a commissioned concert work for orchestra, Reach Forth Our Hands, for the 1996 Cleveland Bicentennial.

At the 79th Academy Awards, Newman appeared in the opening segment by Errol Morris correcting a claim that he had been nominated for and not won an Academy Award eight times: "I've lost seven times; tonight it will be eight."

Musical Style

Newman's earliest scores from the 1980s were predominantly electronic. Starting with The Rapture in 1991, his scores have alternated a more traditional orchestral sound with other passages that use a shifting array of unconventional, non-Western and modified instruments, such as processed hurdy gurdy, detuned mandolin, tabla, xaphoon, and saz, as well as electronic elements to create a percussive, gamelan-like sound. Chas Smith and Rick Cox are frequent collaborators when Newman works in this style. Some of his scores lean more heavily towards one or the other of these modes; the scores for The Player, American Beauty, and Erin Brockovich exemplify his more percussive, "experimental" sound, while his scores for The Shawshank Redemption and Road to Perdition use conventional orchestration equally effectively.

Credits

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