Michael Small (May 30, 1939 – November 24, 2003) was an American

film score A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to ...

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

known for his scores to thriller movies such as ''

Klute ''Klute'' is a 1971 American neo-noir crime thriller film directed and produced by Alan J. Pakula, written by Andy and Dave Lewis, and starring Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Charles Cioffi, and Roy Scheider. The film follows a high-priced ca ...

'', ''

The Parallax View ''The Parallax View'' is a 1974 American political thriller film produced and directed by Alan J. Pakula, and starring Warren Beatty, Hume Cronyn, William Daniels and Paula Prentiss. The screenplay by David Giler and Lorenzo Semple Jr. was based ...

'', '' Marathon Man'', and ''

The Star Chamber ''The Star Chamber'' is a 1983 American crime thriller film starring Michael Douglas, Hal Holbrook, Yaphet Kotto, Sharon Gless, James B. Sikking, and Joe Regalbuto. The film was written by Roderick Taylor and Peter Hyams and directed by Hyams. It ...

''.

Personal life

Small was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

but grew up in

Maplewood, New Jersey Maplewood is a township in Essex County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The township is an inner-ring suburban bedroom community of New York City in the New York metropolitan area. As of the 2020 United States census, the township's populatio ...

. His father, Jack Small, was an actor and later, the general manager of the Shubert Theater in New York City. Small did his undergraduate work at

Williams College Williams College is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a col ...

where he was graduated with a degree in English. He later studied for a year at Harvard University. Small died from

prostate cancer Prostate cancer is cancer of the prostate. Prostate cancer is the second most common cancerous tumor worldwide and is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related mortality among men. The prostate is a gland in the male reproductive system that sur ...

on November 24, 2003, at the age of 64.

Filmography

References

External links

* * *
"Michael Small Explores the Mountains of the Moon
interview by Matthias Büdinger; originally published in ''Soundtrack Magazine'' (volume 9, number 35, 1990), posted at Soundtrack: The CinemaScore and Soundtrack Archives

for "The Doorbell Rang" (2001), the premiere episode of the A&E TV series ''

A Nero Wolfe Mystery ''Nero Wolfe'' is a television series adapted from Rex Stout's Rex Stout bibliography#Nero Wolfe corpus, series of detective stories that aired for two seasons (2001–2002) on A&E (TV channel), A&E. Set in New York City sometime in the 1940s– ...

'', at The Wolfe Pack, official site of the Nero Wolfe Society
Obituary
in ''

Film Score Monthly ''Film Score Monthly'' is an online magazine (and former print magazine) founded by editor-in-chief and executive producer Lukas Kendall in June 1990 in music, 1990 as ''The Soundtrack Correspondence List''. It is dedicated to the art of Film sco ...

'', December 5, 2003
Obituary
in the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'', December 5, 2003
Obituary
at Broadcast Music Inc., December 10, 2003
Obituary
in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', December 15, 2003
Obituary
in ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'', January 3, 2004 {{DEFAULTSORT:Small, Michael American film score composers American male film score composers 1939 births 2003 deaths Deaths from prostate cancer Deaths from cancer in New York (state) 20th-century American composers 20th-century American male musicians