Elliot Goldenthal

Elliot Goldenthal, born May 2, 1954, in Brooklyn, New York, is an American composer whose work spans contemporary classical music, film scores, and theatrical productions. The youngest son of a Jewish housepainter and a Catholic seamstress, Goldenthal grew up in a multicultural neighborhood, an environment that shaped the eclectic range of his musical output. Both sets of his grandparents had immigrated to the United States from Bucharest and Iași, Romania. He attended John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, where at age fourteen he saw his first ballet, Variations on Early Glimpses, performed. During the 1970s he also performed with rock bands before pursuing formal academic training.

Goldenthal earned both his Bachelor of Music degree in 1977 and his Master of Music degree in 1979 from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied composition with John Corigliano. He also studied with Aaron Copland. A fellow student from that period later recalled that Goldenthal was already experimenting with unconventional techniques during his time at the school, including instructing a trumpet student to buzz into the wrong end of a mouthpiece while simultaneously singing into it.

His Broadway credits include Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass and The Green Bird, the latter based on a story by Carlo Gozzi. Juan Darién, which originated in 1988 before its Broadway run, earned Goldenthal a Tony Award nomination in 1997 for Best Original Musical Score. The production also received the Edinburgh Festival Critics Choice Award for Best Music in 1990 and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Richard Rodgers Award for Best Music that same year. Goldenthal himself appeared in the stage production of Juan Darién in the role of Circus Barker and Streetsinger. The Green Bird premiered on Broadway in 1999.

Beyond the stage, Goldenthal has composed scores for a wide range of films, including Pet Sematary, Alien 3, Batman Forever, Heat, Michael Collins, and Interview with the Vampire. He collaborated four times with Irish director Neil Jordan, including on Interview with the Vampire in 1994 and In Dreams in 1999. His score for Michael Collins earned him Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations in 1996, and his score for Interview with the Vampire received an Academy Award nomination in 1994 and a Golden Globe nomination in 1995.

Goldenthal won the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 2002 for Frida, directed by his longtime partner Julie Taymor, whom he met in 1980. He also won the Golden Globe for Best Original Score for the same film, along with two World Soundtrack Awards in 2003 for Best Original Soundtrack of the Year and Soundtrack Composer of the Year. He had a small acting role in Frida as a newsreel reporter. In 2008 he scored Public Enemies for director Michael Mann, and in 2009 he scored Taymor's adaptation of The Tempest.

In 2006, Goldenthal completed Grendel, a three-act opera co-created with Taymor and adapted from John Gardner's novel, which retells the Beowulf story from the monster's perspective. The opera had its world premiere at the Los Angeles Opera in June 2006, with the title role performed by Eric Owens, and was added to the company's permanent repertoire. The work earned Goldenthal a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize for Music in April 2007.

Among his other honors, Goldenthal received a Grammy nomination in 1995 for Best Instrumental Composition for Batman Forever and a Grammy nomination in 1997 for the track Defile and Lament from A Time to Kill. He has received multiple ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards for top box office film scores, including wins for Demolition Man, Interview with the Vampire, Batman Forever, A Time to Kill, Batman and Robin, and S.W.A.T. The Los Angeles Film Critics Association named his score for The Butcher Boy the best of 1998. Goldenthal has cited Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu as an influence on his career. He lives and works in New York City with Taymor.