On the first day of summer, only the 85th birthday of Lalo Schifrin could eclipse the sun. The Argentinian-born Schifrin has composed over 100 scores for film and television, including those for “Cool Hand Luke,” “Bullitt,” “Dirty Harry,” “Enter the Dragon,” “Mannix,” “Starsky and Hutch,” “Rush Hour,” and of course “Mission: Impossible.” (His music for “The Exorcist,” however, was demonstrably rejected by director William Friedkin, who hurled the master tape out into the parking lot.)
A highly respected jazz pianist, Schifrin was discovered by Dizzy Gillespie, who knew to hire him on the spot. He has lived in the United States since 1958, making a very healthy living arranging and composing across genres, including bossa nova, jazz, bebop, rock, and classical, all the while cashing those lucrative Hollywood paychecks.
Join me this afternoon, as I celebrate Schifrin’s birthday with his flute concerto, “Concierto Caribeño.” We’ll also hear music by birthday celebrants Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach (ninth son of Johann Sebastian), Swedish composer Hilding Rosenberg, conductor Hermann Scherchen, soprano Judith Raskin, American pianist and composer Henry Holden Huss (born in Newark, NJ, in 1862), and Czech composer Pavel Haas, who studied with Janáček (the master considered him his finest pupil), but met an early end at Auschwitz.
As if all that is not enough, I’ll have a couple of selections for the season, as time allows. Join me from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT. I am too much in the sun on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.