Marco Beltrami studied at Brown University before entering the Yale School of Music on a scholarship. He then studied for a time in Venice under the Italian master Luigi Nono and also via a fellowship with Jerry Goldsmith. He is one of the younger generation of composers who has been quite prolific in recent years on many summer blockbusters, and has found himself scoring frequently in the modern horror or thriller genres. His breakthrough was probably the music for "Scream" where he sought inspiration from another Italian composer Ennio Morricone. As well as the original Scream and its two sequels, Beltrami has also scored for the horror films Mimic, "The Faculty", "Scary Movie 2", the remakes of "The Omen" and "Carrie", "World War Z" and "The Woman in Black" (which is expected to have a sequel also with a Marco Beltrami score).
Having served an apprenticeship on these and a number of high profile sequels of action, sci-fi and effects films (Terminator 3 and Blade 2), Beltrami then secured the rewarding task of scoring eagerly awaited film adaptations inspired by the book "I Robot" and by the comic strip Hellboy. Beltrami has now proven his versatility on the more subtle score for Tommy Lee Jones directorial debut, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada where he again pays homage to Morricone, and the remake of the Western "3:10 to Yuma". Having now scored both "Live Free and Die Hard" (aka "Die Hard 4.0") and the more recent A Good Day to Die Hard, Beltrami seems to have convincingly taken over the franchise's music from the late Michael Kamen who scored the first 3 films in the "Die Hard" series.
Beltrami has recently scored The Wolverine with Hugh Jackman set mostly in Japan, with the composer making some use of Japanese instruments, the remake of "Carrie" and another film The Homesman for Tommy Lee Jones. There are many more film scores in the pipeline so watch this space. We can thoroughly recommend the compilation album called "Marco Beltrami: Music for Film" which is available at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
"Bach by Beltrami" is the film composer's latest project, re-imaging the music of Bach mainly from the Preludes of his Well-Tempered Clavier.
A number of Marco Beltrami scores are widely available on CD or for download, and we suggest the following items as a good place to start:
Here are some CD covers signed by Marco Beltrami, Buck Sanders & Marcus Trumpp. Our thanks to Petr Kocanda for permission to use his collection of autographed CDs. Click any thumbnail below to see the image full size in a separate window.
mfiles home