Alan Silvestri

Alan Silvestri is an American composer, conductor, orchestrator, and music producer born on March 26, 1950, in New York, New York. His grandparents emigrated from the Italian town of Castell'Alfero in 1909 and settled in Teaneck, New Jersey, where Silvestri grew up and graduated from Teaneck High School in 1968. He attended Berklee College of Music for two years, and the institution later awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Music in 1995. Before pursuing composition, he briefly played drums in 1966 with a Teaneck-based rock band called the Wildcats.

Silvestri relocated to Los Angeles in 1970. His first film scoring opportunity came in 1972 when he was asked to compose music for the low-budget action film The Doberman Gang, a project he took on with no prior composing experience. From 1978 to 1983, he served as the primary composer for the television series CHiPs, contributing music to 95 of the show's 139 episodes. His collaboration with director Robert Zemeckis began with Romancing the Stone in 1984 and has continued across nearly all of Zemeckis's subsequent feature films, among them the Back to the Future trilogy (1985–1990), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Death Becomes Her (1992), Forrest Gump (1994), Contact (1997), Cast Away (2000), The Polar Express (2004), Beowulf (2007), A Christmas Carol (2009), Flight (2012), and The Walk (2015).

Beyond his work with Zemeckis, Silvestri has scored a wide range of films, including Predator (1987), The Abyss (1989), Father of the Bride (1991), The Bodyguard (1992), Eraser (1996), The Parent Trap (1998), Practical Magic (1998), Stuart Little (1999), The Mummy Returns (2001), Lilo & Stitch (2002), Van Helsing (2004), the first three Night at the Museum films, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009), The A-Team (2010), and Ready Player One (2018). He has also composed scores for five Marvel Cinematic Universe films: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), The Avengers (2012), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), and the forthcoming Avengers: Doomsday (2026). His television work includes episodes of T.J. Hooker, Starsky & Hutch, and Tales from the Crypt, as well as the 2014 science documentary series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. He also wrote new songs with Glen Ballard for Disney's live-action and CGI adaptation of Pinocchio.

Silvestri's work has earned him two Grammy Awards: Best Instrumental Composition for "Cast Away End Credits" in 2002, and Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media for "Believe" from The Polar Express in 2004. He has received nine Grammy nominations in total, covering scores and compositions from Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame, among others. He has also received two Academy Award nominations — Best Original Score for Forrest Gump and Best Original Song for "Believe" — along with two Golden Globe nominations for the same films. His two Primetime Emmy Awards were both earned for Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, for Outstanding Main Title Theme Music and Outstanding Music Composition for a Series. He has won the Saturn Award for Best Music three times, for Predator, Back to the Future Part III, and Van Helsing. In 2011, he received the Max Steiner Film Music Achievement Award at the Hollywood in Vienna gala concert.

Silvestri's connection to the Back to the Future franchise extended to the stage when he received credit as a Broadway book writer on Back to the Future: The Musical. Outside of his professional work, Silvestri and his wife Sandra own Silvestri Vineyards in Carmel Valley, California, and operate a wine tasting room in the Enchanted Oaks Building. He holds a pilot's license and flies his own jet aircraft. He has a daughter and two sons.