Marco Beltrami

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Marco Beltrami (born October 7, 1966) is an Italian-American film composer. Beltrami was born in the small town of Fornero, Italy, but grew up on Long Island, New York, USA. (His father, born in Italy, taught mathematics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook; his mother was Greek-American.) He graduated from Brown University, spent some time in Venice working with the eminent classical composer Luigi Nono, studied at the Yale School of Music upon his return to the USA, and then moved west to the USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles, where he studied under Jerry Goldsmith.

A few classical commissions and USC student films aside, Beltrami scored his first movie feature in 1994, the thriller Death Match for director Joe Coppolletta, and reached a higher level of public acclaim in 1996 when he wrote the score for Wes Craven's smash hit shocker Scream. Since then, Beltrami has become firmly entrenched as a composer of choice for the horror/thriller and action genre, with the Scream sequels and hit movies such as Mimic (1997), The Faculty (1998), Angel Eyes (2001), Joy Ride (2001), Resident Evil (2002), which he co-composed with Marilyn Manson), Blade 2 (2002), Hellboy (2004), I, Robot (2004) and Red Eye (2005) featuring in prominently his resume. He was nominated for an Emmy Award for his score for the film David and Lisa in 1998, indicating a desire to spread his musical wings beyond the bounds of his genre pigeonholing. For his most recent work is Live Free Or Die Hard, the fourth instalment in the Die Hard trilogy, he used some of Michael Kamen's original themes in the previous three films, as Kamen died in 2003.

Beltrami's signature style is based around highly percussive texture. He often employs both traditional percussive instruments like bass drums, as well as violins and brass instruments, forming layers of hits and stabs.

[edit] Collaborations

Marco Beltrami has worked constantly for such directors as Len Wiseman, Wes Craven and specially with Guillermo del Toro, on his American films.

It was even reported in October 2002 on Marco's official website that he had worked on orchestral arrangements for the songs "Thyme", "The General", "Leave Me Alone", and "Seven" off the yet unreleased Guns N' Roses album Chinese Democracy. None of the tracks are confirmed for release on the album, but they were confirmed as being recorded during the sessions, and may see release on one of Axl Rose's reported "sequels" if they are not released on Chinese Democracy.