Mission: Impossible Composer Lalo Schifrin Dies at 93

Lalo Schifrin, the award-winning composer of Mission: Impossible, as well other films including The Amityville Horror and Dirty Harry, has died. He was 93.

According to Variety and the Associated Press, the musician’s son Ryan confirmed that he died peacefully in his home in Los Angeles on Thursday, June 26, surrounded by family. He had been experiencing complications from pneumonia, Ryan said.

Born in 1932 in Argentina, Schifrin won four Grammy Awards and was nominated for six Oscars over the course of his storied career. Five of those nominations were for Best Original Score for Amityville Horror, Cool Hand Luke, The Fox, Voyage of the Damned and The Sting II.

Schifrin’s Mission: Impossible theme earned him two Grammy Awards in 1968, and three of his four Emmy nominations. His score went on to be used for decades, beginning with the original 1960s TV series, before being brought back for the Tom Cruise-led film franchise in 1996.

Speaking with AP in 2006, Schifrin shared that he originally wrote a different theme song, but the original series’ creator, Bruce Geller, liked another piece of music that Schifrin had written for an action scene.

“The producer called me and told me, ‘You’re going to have to write something exciting, almost like a logo, something that will be a signature, and it’s going to start with a fuse,’ ” Schifrin told the outlet at the time. “So I did it, and there was nothing on the screen. And maybe the fact that I was so free and I had no images to catch, maybe that’s why this thing has become so successful — because I wrote something that came from inside me.”

In November 2018, Schifrin was awarded the third-ever honorary Oscar from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. According to Variety, director Clint Eastwood, for whom Schifrin composed several film scores, presented him the award “in recognition of his unique musical style, compositional integrity and influential contributions to the art of film scoring.”

“His work cannot be easily labeled,” Kathy Bates, who worked with the composer on 2004’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey, said of Schifrin’s work at the event, per Variety. “Is what he creates jazz? Is it classical, contemporary, popular? The answer is yes, it is all of those things. Lalo is a true Renaissance man: a performer at the piano, a painter with notes, a conductor and composer who has scored some of the most memorable films of the past half-century.”

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“Composing for movies has been a lifetime of joy and creativity,” Schifrin said at the time. “Receiving this honorary Oscar is the culmination of a dream. It is a mission accomplished.”

Outside of film, Schifrin began his career in jazz music, taking home some of his earlier Grammy nominations in the genre while working with greats such as Stan Getz, Cal Tjader and Bob Brookmeyer.

He also wrote the grand finale musical performance for the World Cup soccer championship in Italy in 1990. The piece featured famed vocalists Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and José Carreras, and would later become one of the biggest sellers in the history of classical music, according to AP.

In the ’80s and ’90s, Schifrin served as the director of the Paris Philharmonic and the Glendale Symphony in California. He started his own jazz and orchestral music label, called Aleph, in 1998.

One of his last works was a symphony called “Long Live Freedom.” According to Variety, the music was a collaboration with fellow Argentine composer Rod Schejtman that was dedicated to their home country.

“Every movie has its own personality. There are no rules to write music for movies,” Schifrin told AP in 2018. “The movie dictates what the music will be.”

Schifrin is survived by his sons, Ryan and William, daughter, Frances, and wife, Donna, according to AP.