The youngest son of legendary Fox composer Alfred Newman, Thomas Montgomery Newman (whose nickname
is Tommy) was born in Los Angeles on October 20, 1955. He grew up not only in the shadow of his father,
but also uncles Lionel and Emil. Lionel, who succeeded Alfred as music director for Fox, gave Thomas
his first scoring assignment (on a 1979 episode of television's The Paper Chase). Emil, best
known as a conductor at Fox and Goldwyn Studios, was responsible for the young composer's entry into
the BMI representative agency. Cousin Randy Newman, meanwhile, was already a popular singer/songwriter
(and also now a Grammy and Oscar-winning film composer), while brother David was a studio violinist
who also joined the ranks of film composers in the 1980's and has had a prolific career of his own.
A classical training, inspired by Newman's desire to master the piano and violin, led to an informal
Hollywood apprenticeship in the early 1980's due his family ties with his uncle Lionel, who was head
of music at Fox during Thomas' high school and college years. The apprentice had previously watched
John Williams conduct and record several major scores, including
The Towering Inferno and
The Poseidon Adventure in the early 1970's. Through that connection, Newman was responsible
for orchestrating Darth Vader's death scene cue for
Return of the Jedi in 1983, although
Newman claims that Williams' composition was so complete that his own influence on the task was
minimal.
Newman studied at both USC and Yale and then spent time writing for off-Broadway productions, theatre,
and pop bands such as "The Innocents" and "Tokyo 77." He was mentored by Broadway great Stephen
Sondheim and backed into a film scoring career when producer Scott Rudin hired him as a musical
assistant on the 1984 teen-angst drama
Reckless. He wound up scoring the movie, the first of
a batch of hip and popular films to boast Newman scores, including
Revenge of the Nerds the
same year,
Desperately Seeking Susan in 1985, and
The Lost Boys in 1987. As the 1990's
dawned, it became clear that Thomas Newman's modus operandi was an endless odyssey in search of just
the right sound for each movie. The choices are vast, especially considering Newman's facility both
with the traditional orchestra and the ever-growing electronic palette.
Although most of Newman's early scores were written for electronic instruments, he soon tried using
acoustic instruments along with the synthesizers. There were the off-kilter chimes and percussion of
Robert Altman's Hollywood satire
The Player in 1992, the rich 19th-century Americana idioms
of
Little Women and the dark, brooding strings of
The Shawshank Redemption, which won
him dual 1994 Oscar nominations. He was again nominated for an Oscar for the strange ensemble of
zither, hurdy-gurdy, psaltery and dulcimer used in Diane Keaton's comedy
Unsung Heroes. He
would explore shifting romantic moods of
Up Close & Personal in 1996 and tackle the ambitious
and haunting orchestral-and-choral accompaniment for the period Australian drama
Oscar and
Lucinda the following year.
His duo of
The Green Mile and the Best Picture-winning
American Beauty in 1999
presented Newman with polar challenges, with the former requiring 95 minutes of music over six months
and the latter highlighting the moral ambiguity of the film through the use of xylophones, marimbas,
tablas, bongos, cymbals, guitars, piano, flute and various world-music instruments. Newman would
continue to experiment with these ideas in scores throughout the 2000's, and he would win his first
Emmy Award for his title music to the hit TV series "Six Feet Under" the same year. While continuing
to explore this unorthodox selection of instrumentation in his scores, he has also remained in touch
with his orchestral past in impressive works ranging from
Road to Perdition in 2002 to his
James Bond debut for
Skyfall in 2012.
Thomas Newman in 2003
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