Mission Impossible: My Life in Music

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Mission Impossible: My Life in Music is the engaging autobiography of Lalo Schifrin, the musician, conductor, and composer of more than 60 jazz and classical works and over 100 film and television scores, including Bullitt, the Rush Hour series, Cool Hand Luke, The Dead Pool, Tango, The Fox, Voyage of the Damned, The Amityville Horror, The Sting II, and Mission Impossible. Edited by Richard Palmer, this autobiography is a journey from Schifrin's formative years in Argentina to the classical and jazz atmospheres in Paris in the 1950s; and from his jazz career in the United States with Dizzy Gillespie from 1958-1963 to his development as a film and television composer from 1963 to the present.

Organized in eight parts, the book reflects on Schifrin's cosmopolitan experience and provides impressions and vignettes of the extraordinary people with whom he worked. As a composer whose works bridge three main musical stylesjazz, classical, and film and televisionhis autobiography offers invaluable insights on all three genres, as well as politics, literature, and travel. This significant volume includes over 30 photos, appendixes listing Schifrin's works, and a discography, as well as an audio CD featuring some of Schifrin's greatest compositions.

Reviews

Lalo Schifrin's autobiography is a wonderful story of a musician with great talent who realized and accomplished his 'mission' on many fronts. This book should be particularly inspiring to young musicians as it clearly reveals how talent and hard work can lead to real success. Congratulations to Lalo on this book and for the great music that continues at the highest level. -- Kenny Burrell, Professor of Music and Ethnomusicology, University of California, Los Angeles
A book on the life of Lalo Schifrin is a book about creativity, music, and passion - in short, a book about a life we would all aspire to live. -- James Morrison
This book is a must-read for any fan of Schifrin as well as students of film scoring, jazz musicians, concert composers, filmmakers, instrumentalists, and conductors. * Ain't It Cool News *
Schifrin's story represents the familiar yet fascinating story of the diversely talented, contemporary musician's quest to create not jazz, or classical music, or commercial music, or popular music, but music. There is a fine line between a "Renaissance man" and a Jack-of-all-trades, and once hopes that this autobiography will spawn further conversation on how effectively Schifrin has approached that line. -- Anthony Bushard
Intelligent and captivating, this autobiography by Lalo Schifrin is impossible to resist. Lalo has achieved his mission, and then some, changing the sound of American music and listeners' expectations in a multitude of contexts. Here, Lalo's passion for life and his integrity and wit shine as they do in his music; his insights into not only creating music but also making a living as a musician and composer make for fascinating reading. -- Jon Faddis, trumpeter, composer, conductor, & educator

Author Bio

Lalo Schifrin has received four Grammy Awards and six Academy Award nominations, and recently established a jazz and classical composition scholarship at University of California in Los Angeles.

Richard Palmer is director of general education at Bedford School in the UK. He is the author of Sonny Rollins: The Cutting Edge (2004), and editor of Jazz Writings (2005).