Alan Silvestri was born to second-generation immigrants on March 26, 1950, in New York City.
First experimenting with music at a very young age in Teaneck, New Jersey, Silvestri began to
consider a career in music instead of major league baseball at the age of 15. He attended Boston's Berklee
College of Music, but had been there only two years when he moved to Las Vegas and began touring with
R&B legend Wayne Cochran and the C.C. Riders band. Silvestri attempted to secure work as an arranger
in Las Vegas, never once considering going to Los Angeles. Enticed by an offer to do the arrangements
on a friend's album, he did finally move there. While staying at the Travel Lodge motel on Sunset Boulevard,
Silvestri met Bradford Craig. As a lyricist for some projects with Quincy Jones, Craig had been nominated
for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award. He gave Silvestri some arranging assignments, which turned
into the break he had been waiting for. A small production company had mistakenly asked Craig (only a
lyricist) to score a film for them, and Craig literally put the phone on hold and asked Silvestri if he
wanted to score it instead. Accepting the job at the age of 20, Silvestri's first score would be 1972's
The Doberman Gang.
Having never scored a film and knowing nothing about the process, Silvestri picked up a copy of Earl
Hagan's book "How to Score a Film" and read it cover to cover the night before his meeting with the
film's producers. Nevertheless, his viable work for
The Doberman Gang triggered a succession of
low-budget film assignments for Silvestri until he landed a job with the hit TV series
CHiPs in
1978. Silvestri scored approximately 120 hours of this popular show, and had just started to make a
living as a composer when it canceled. After a work drought of some 18 months, Silvestri's phone rang
again on a late 1984 night. One of the music editors that Silvestri had worked with on
CHiPs
said that a film he was working on was desperate for a musical sound that they hadn't been able to find
to date. The conversation that Silvestri had with director Robert Zemeckis that night would prove to
be one of the most important of his life. Zemeckis asked him if he could put together three minutes of
music that would go with a South American sequence in
Romancing the Stone. Based on Zemeckis'
description, Silvestri stayed up all night in his home studio creating a three-minute demo for their
meeting the next day.
Upon meeting Silvestri, Zemeckis was immediately sold on his musical style, and
the two men, wearing identical sweaters that day by chance, would both be launched a solid collaboration
with
Romancing the Stone. Together, Silvestri and Zemeckis experienced subsequent success with
the
Back to the Future franchise,
Forrest Gump,
Who Framed Roger Rabbit,
Contact,
and more. They also worked together on the TV-series
Amazing Stories (1 episode) and
Tales from
the Crypt (3 episodes). In the years since, Silvestri has received universal appreciation for his
scores, and that attention has translated into nominations for an Academy Award, Grammy Award, and Golden
Globe. In between his scoring assignments, Silvestri lives with his wife and son in the Northern California
town of Carmel. They own a ranch with cattle, horses, and other various livestock. Silvestri removes himself
from his studio to work at the ranch and ride the tractor for long hours. He also has a large piece of
ground with grape vines used for growing his own wine. With a private pilot license, Silvestri often flies
himself with his own jet plane to Los Angeles for sessions and meetings.
Robert Zemeckis and Alan Silvestri, 2000
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