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Apr 8, 2020 · As the Internet has let simpatico nutcases answer Elfman’s clarion call, what may have initially seemed like a lack of polish can be revealed as creative self-assurance.
May 13, 2022 · One extremely notable aspect of Danny Elfman's 2022 Coachella show was that the 68-year-old spent a lot of time shirtless, and as GQ notes, his appearance is markedly different from what you'd imagine a man of his age to look. As you might suspect, his ripped look is no accident.
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- Early Life
- Career
- Influences and Style
- Methods
- Personal Life
- Awards and Nominations
- Discography
Elfman was born on May 29, 1953, in Los Angeles, California, to a Jewish family of Polish and Russian 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...
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...
Film scoring
As fans of Oingo Boingo, Tim Burton and Paul Reubens invited Elfman to write the score for their first feature film Pee-wee's Big Adventure in 1985. Elfman was initially apprehensive because of his lack of formal training and having never scored a studio feature, but after Burton accepted his initial demo of the title music, and with orchestration assistance from Oingo Boingo guitarist and arranger Steve Bartek, Elfman completed the score to great effect, paying homage to influential film com...
Concert and stage music
Elfman's first piece of original concert music, Serenada Schizophrana, was commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, who premiered the piece on February 23, 2005, at Carnegie Hall. Subsequent concert works include his first Violin Concerto "Eleven Eleven", co-commissioned by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, Stanford Live at Stanford University, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, which premiered at Smetana Hall in Prague on June 21, 2017, with Sandy Cameron on violin and...
Elfman has said his major influences are composers from Hollywood's Golden Age, such as Bernard Herrmann, Dimitri Tiomkin, Max Steiner, David Tamkin, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Carl Stalling; 20th century classical composers Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Carl Orff; and jazz, experimental and minimalist c...
Film music
For his film scores, Elfman draws musical inspiration almost exclusively from viewing a cut of the film, and occasionally from visits to the set while the film is in production (he wrote and orchestrated his theme for Batman on an airplane to Los Angeles after visiting the set in London). While he prefers not to work from script, story or concept, exceptions include The Nightmare Before Christmas, for which ten songs needed to be written in advance of filmmaking, and Dumbo, for which he compo...
Concert music
In the liner notes for the 2006 CD recording of his first concert work Serenada Schizophrana, Elfman wrote: "I began composing several dozen short improvisational compositions, maybe a minute each. Slowly, some of them began to develop themselves until finally I had six separate movements that, in some abstract, absurd way, felt connected." To create the cadenzas for his violin concerto Eleven Eleven, Elfman collaborated with soloist Sandy Cameron, for whom the piece was written.
Vocals
Elfman often incorporates choral or vocal arrangements into his film scores, notably the use of women's and children's choirs (Scrooged, Nightbreed, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Sleepy Hollow, Alice in Wonderland, The Grinch), and solo voice or vocal effects (Beetlejuice, Mars Attacks!, Men in Black II, Flubber, Nacho Libre, Iris, Dark Shadows, The Girl on the Train). Evoking the "O Fortuna" from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, he set made-up, Latin-sounding text for SATB choir in standou...
As a teenager, Elfman dated his classmate Kim Gordon, who would later become one of the members of the rock band Sonic Youth. He has two daughters, Lola and Mali, from his marriage to Geri Eisenmenger. Mali is a film producer and actress. Elfman and Mali collaborated on her 2011 film Do Not Disturb. On November 29, 2003, Elfman married actress Brid...
American Film Institute
Elfman's scores for Batman and Edward Scissorhandswere nominated for AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores.
Including commercial recordings of his film scores and the Oingo Boingo discography, Elfman has produced over 100 albums as of 2019.
Daniel Robert Elfman (born May 29, 1953) is an American film composer, singer, songwriter, and musician. He came to prominence as the lead singer and primary songwriter for the new wave band Oingo Boingo in the early 1980s.
Aug 10, 2022 · Elfman launched his musical career with the experimental ensemble, The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, which he describes as a “crazy, multimedia cabaret” that did street theatre using no amplification, mixing animation and film clips with a love for weird, early 20 th Century music.
Jul 6, 2015 · That Elfman was cast as Jack Skellington’s singing voice was due in part to the fact that the pumpkin king’s identity crisis mirrored Elfman’s own at the time, particularly in the song “Jack’s...
Only a relatively small body of literature treats Elfman’s work so far, mostly articles and book chapters that focus on his work with Burton, and there is a noticeable lack of case studies on any of his scores for other directors.
