Boris Claudio "Lalo" Schifrin (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈlalo ˈʃifɾin]; June 21, 1932 – June 26, 2025) was an Argentine and American pianist, composer, arranger, and conductor. He first became famous as a jazz composer and is best known for his many film and television scores, which combined jazz and Latin American music with traditional orchestral music.

Schifrin’s most famous compositions include the themes from Mission: Impossible (1966) and Mannix (1967), as well as the scores for Cool Hand Luke (1967), Bullitt (1968), THX 1138 (1971), Enter the Dragon (1973), The Four Musketeers (1974), Voyage of the Damned (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), The Amityville Horror (1979), and the Rush Hour trilogy (1998–2007). He also worked with actor Clint Eastwood on several films from the late 1960s through the 1980s, including the Dirty Harry series. Schifrin composed the musical piece used by Paramount Pictures from 1976 to 2004.

Schifrin won five Grammy Awards and was nominated for six Academy Awards, including five for Best Original Score and one for Best Original Song. He also received four Emmy Awards. In 2019, he was honored with an Honorary Academy Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his successful career.

Life and career

Lalo Schifrin was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on June 21, 1932, as Boris Claudio. His nickname "Lalo" was the common Argentine short form for his second name, Claudio. When he moved to the United States, he legally changed his name to Lalo to make his contracts easier.

His father, Luis Schifrin, led the second violin section of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic for 30 years. His father was Jewish, and his mother was Catholic, which exposed him early to both religions. At age six, Schifrin began a six-year piano study with Enrique Barenboim, the father of pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim. Later, he studied piano with Andrea Karalin, a Greek-Russian expatriate who once led the Kiev Conservatory, and also studied harmony with Juan Carlos Paz. During this time, Schifrin became interested in jazz.

Although Schifrin studied sociology and law at the University of Buenos Aires, he became more interested in music. At age 20, he earned a scholarship to the Conservatoire de Paris, where he studied from 1952 to 1955. He studied with composers Olivier Messiaen and Charles Koechlin and also learned African drumming. At night, he played jazz in Paris clubs. In 1955, Schifrin played piano with bandoneon player Ástor Piazzolla and represented Argentina at the International Jazz Festival in Paris.

After returning to Argentina in his twenties, Schifrin formed a jazz big band of 16 players that became part of a popular weekly TV show in Buenos Aires. He also began working on film, television, and radio projects. In 1956, he met Dizzy Gillespie and offered to write a long musical piece for Gillespie’s big band. Schifrin completed the work, Gillespiana, in 1958, and it was recorded in 1960.

In 1960, while in New York City, Schifrin met Gillespie again. By then, Gillespie had ended his big band due to financial reasons. Gillespie invited Schifrin to join his quintet as the pianist and arranger. Schifrin accepted and moved to New York City. He wrote another extended composition for Gillespie, The New Continent, which was recorded in 1962. On May 26, 1963, Schifrin recorded an album, Buenos Aires Blues, with Johnny Hodges, Duke Ellington’s alto saxophonist. Schifrin wrote two songs for the album: Dreary Blues and B. A. Blues.

In 1963, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which had Schifrin under contract, gave him his first Hollywood film assignment for the African adventure Rhino!. Schifrin moved to Los Angeles and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1969.

One of Schifrin’s most well-known compositions is the theme music for the TV series Mission: Impossible, which began in 1966. The theme is a unique tune written in the uncommon 4 time signature. The rhythm (dash dash, dot dot) represents the letters M and I in Morse code. Similarly, Schifrin’s theme for the Mannix TV show, composed in 1967, was a jazz waltz. Over the years, he created many jazzy and bluesy pieces for the show.

Schifrin’s “Tar Sequence” from the Cool Hand Luke film score (written in 4) became the theme for Eyewitness News broadcasts on New York’s WABC-TV and other ABC stations, as well as Nine News in Australia. It was used until the 1990s. In the 1970s and early 1980s, CBS Television used part of the St. Ives soundtrack for its golf broadcasts. Schifrin’s score for the 1968 film Coogan’s Bluff marked the start of a long collaboration with Clint Eastwood and director Don Siegel. His strong jazz-blues style was evident in Dirty Harry. The jazzy Bullitt score, for a film directed by Peter Yates, was recorded in December 1968. In 1973, Schifrin combined funk and traditional film score elements for the Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon. He sampled sounds from China, Korea, and Japan for the soundtrack, which sold over 500,000 copies and earned a gold record.

Schifrin’s working score for the 1973 film The Exorcist was rejected by director William Friedkin. Schifrin had written six minutes of intense music for the film’s trailer, but audiences were frightened by the combination of sights and sounds. Warner Bros. executives told Friedkin to ask Schifrin to make the music softer, but Friedkin did not pass the message on. Schifrin later reused some of the compositions in other scores. In 1976, he released a single called “Jaws,” a version of the Jaws theme from the Universal Pictures film, on CTI records. The single spent nine weeks on the UK chart, reaching number 14. He also composed the 1976 fanfare for Paramount Pictures, used mainly for their home video label and later adapted for their television division. In 1981, he wrote the music for the comedy film Caveman.

In the 1990s, Schifrin arranged many pieces for The Three Tenors concerts, starting with their first concert in Rome in 1990. In the 1998 film Tango, he returned to tango music, which he had learned while working as Piazzolla’s pianist in the 1950s. He included traditional tango songs and introduced his own compositions that blended tango with jazz.

In 1998, Schifrin founded Aleph Records. He made a cameo appearance in the 2002 film Red Dragon. His music has been used in many hip-hop and trip-hop songs, including Prowl by Heltah Skeltah and Sour Times by Portishead. Both songs sampled his composition “Danube Incident,” one of many themes he wrote for episodes of Mission: Impossible. In 2003, Schifrin was asked to compose a classical work called Symphonic Impressions of Oman for Sultan Qaboos bin Said. In 2004, he wrote the main theme for Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, a video game published by Ubisoft.

On April 23, 2007, Schifrin performed a concert of film music at the Festival du Film Jules Verne in Paris

Personal life

Schifrin married Sylvia Schon in Buenos Aires in 1958. They had two children before their marriage ended in divorce. In 1971, he married Donna Cockrell. They had one son. His second wife helped manage his business and record label.

In 2008, Schifrin wrote an autobiography titled Mission Impossible: My Life in Music.

Schifrin died from complications of pneumonia at a hospital in Los Angeles on June 26, 2025. He was 93 years old at the time of his death.

Awards and nominations

Schifrin has won five Grammy Awards, including four regular Grammy Awards and one Latin Grammy, and has received 22 nominations. He also earned one CableACE Award and was nominated six times for an Academy Award and four times for a Primetime Emmy Award. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2016, it was announced that his Mission: Impossible theme music would be added to the Grammy Award Hall of Fame. In 2018, Clint Eastwood gave him an Academy Honorary Award to honor his special musical style, consistent quality in his music, and important contributions to film scoring.