Filmography/Reviews | Recommendations | Biography

Lee Holdridge in 2003

"If you're a good composer, you'll come up with pieces that live beyond just the film. Not every film lends itself to writing something really strong that would live beyond the film, but with East of Eden or Splash, if you have a great theme, it goes on in other incarnations."
-- Lee Holdridge in 1999

It is not often that top talent can be so consistently found in the genre of television scoring, but veteran composer Lee Holdridge has made a monumentally successful career of it. When producing music for television films and series, the frustrations of budgetary and time constraints are often exaggerated to levels far beyond those of major studio film projects. Holdridge, however, continues to provide quality, melodic music for all of his low budget assignments, whether with an orchestra, a combination of the orchestral and synthetic, or even with electronics alone. Holdridge has written music for films on nearly every network and cable entity, including NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, TNT, HBO, and Showtime. The massive 2001 score for The Mists of Avalon remains Holdridge's most outstanding mainstream success. His work for documentaries is also critically acclaimed, with several big-name documentary titles under his belt in the last ten years.

The career of Lee Holdridge, however, is by no means limited to television and documentaries. The expansive list of works by the Latino-born composer extends from major film scores to popular song-writing abilities employed by the world's foremost opera and pop singers. His writing and arranging experience has led to orchestral concert and studio recordings with performers ranging from Placido Domingo and Barbra Streisand to Neil Diamond and John Denver. These talents have also extended to the animated and live-action musical genres, a few of which have been released on CD albums. For film score fans (those who recall Holdridge's Splash and Old Gringo, among other top achievements), Holdridge's music on CD has been an elusive prospect. Due to his work on projects of lesser public knowledge, the vast majority of his music has never seen a commercial CD release, leaving collectors scrambling for the few promotional albums of his diverse works.