Danny Elfman

Daniel Robert Elfman (born May 29, 1953) is an American film composer, singer and songwriter. He came to prominence as the singer-songwriter for the new wave band Oingo Boingo in the early 1980s. Since the 1990s, Elfman has garnered international recognition for composing over 100 feature film scores, as well as compositions for television, stage productions, and the concert hall.

Elfman has frequently worked with directors Tim Burton, Sam Raimi, and Gus Van Sant, with achievements including the scores of 17 Burton films such as ''Batman'', '' Batman Returns'', '' Edward Scissorhands, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland'', and '' Dumbo''; Raimi's ''Darkman'' (1990), '' A Simple Plan'' (1998), ''Spider-Man'', '' Spider-Man 2'', '' Oz the Great and Powerful'', and '' Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness''; and Van Sant's Academy Award-winning films '' Good Will Hunting'' and '' Milk''. He wrote music for all of the '' Men in Black'' and '' Fifty Shades of Grey'' franchise films, the songs and score for Henry Selick's animated musical '' The Nightmare Before Christmas'', and the themes for the popular television series ''Desperate Housewives'' and '' The Simpsons''.

Among his honors are four Oscar nominations, two Emmy Awards, a Grammy, seven Saturn Awards for Best Music, the 2002 Richard Kirk Award, the 2015 Disney Legend Award, the Max Steiner Film Music Achievement Award in 2017, and the Society of Composers & Lyricists Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022.

Early life

Elfman was born on May 29, 1953 in Los Angeles, California, to a Jewish family of Polish-Jewish and Russian-Jewish descent. He is a son of Blossom Elfman (née Bernstein), a writer and teacher, and Milton Elfman, a teacher, and the brother of actor, musician, and journalist Richard Elfman. Elfman was raised in a racially mixed affluent community in Baldwin Hills, California, where he spent much of his time at the local movie theater discovering classic sci-fi, fantasy and horror films and first noticed the music of such film composers as Bernard Herrmann and Franz Waxman. Elfman has admitted to fabricating stories about his past out of boredom, including a false birthplace of Amarillo, Texas, and parents in the United States Air Force.

In his early school days, Elfman exhibited an aptitude for science with almost no interest in music, and was even rejected from elementary school orchestra "for having no propensity for music." This would change when he switched high schools in the late 1960s and fell in with a musical crowd, who introduced him to early jazz and the work of Stravinsky and his 20th-century contemporaries.

After finishing high school early with plans to travel the world, Elfman followed his brother Richard to France, where he performed violin with Jérôme Savary's Le Grand Magic Circus, an avant-garde musical theater group. He then embarked on a ten-month, self-guided tour through Africa, busking and collecting a range of West African percussion instruments until a series of illnesses forced him to return home. At this time, Richard was forming a new musical theater group in Los Angeles.

While Elfman was never officially a student at CalArts, Nyoman Wenten, an instructor in the Indonesian music department, encouraged him to attend classes and perform music there for two years.

Career

Oingo Boingo

After returning to Los Angeles from Africa in the early 1970s, Elfman was asked by his brother Richard to serve as musical director of his street theatre performance art troupe The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. Elfman was tasked with adapting and arranging 1920s and 1930s jazz and big band music by artists such as Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Django Reinhardt and Josephine Baker for the ensemble, which consisted of up to 15 performers playing upwards of 30 instruments. He also composed original pieces and helped build instruments unique for the group, including an aluminum gamelan, the 'Schlitz celeste' made from tuned beer cans, and a "junkyard orchestra" built from car parts and trash cans.

The Mystic Knights performed on the street and in nightclubs throughout Los Angeles until Richard left in 1979 to pursue filmmaking. As a send-off to the group's original concept, Richard produced the film '' Forbidden Zone'' based on the Mystic Knights' stage performances. Elfman composed the songs and his first score for the film, and appeared as the character Satan, who performs a reworked version of Calloway's " Minnie the Moocher."

Before the release of '' Forbidden Zone'', Elfman took over the Mystic Knights as lead singer-songwriter in 1979. He pared the group down to eight players to record and tour as a