Robert David "Dave" Grusin (born June 26, 1934) is an American composer, arranger, producer, and pianist. He has composed many scores for feature films and television, and has won numerous awards for his soundtrack and record work, including an Academy Award and ten Grammy Awards. He has had a prolific recording career as an artist, arranger, producer and executive producer. He is the co-founder of GRP Records.

Born in Littleton, Colorado, he studied music at the University of Colorado at Boulder and was awarded his degree in 1956. He produced his first single, "Subways Are for Sleeping", in 1962 and his first film score for Divorce American Style (1967). Other scores followed, including Winning (1969), The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), The Midnight Man (1974), and Three Days of the Condor (1975).

In the late 1970s, he started GRP Records with his business partner, Larry Rosen, and began to create some of the first commercial digital recordings. He was the composer for The Graduate, On Golden Pond (1981), Tootsie (1982) and The Goonies (1985). In 1988, he won the Oscar for best original score for The Milagro Beanfield War, He also composed the musical scores for the 1984 TriStar Pictures and the 1993 Columbia Pictures Television logos.

From 2000 through 2011, Grusin concentrated on composing classical and jazz compositions, touring and recording with collaborators, including guitarist Lee Ritenour. Their album Harlequin won a Grammy Award in 1985. Their classical crossover albums, Two Worlds and Amparo, were nominated for Grammys.

Life and career

Grusin was born in Littleton, Colorado, the son of Rosabelle (née De Poyster), a pianist, and Henri Grusin, a violinist who immigrated from Riga, Latvia.^[1][2] An alumnus of the University of Colorado at Boulder, College of Music, he was awarded his bachelor's degree in 1956. Among his teachers there were Cecil Effinger and Wayne Scott, longtime pianist, arranger and professor of jazz.^[3] Grusin has a filmography of about 100 titles. His many awards include an Oscar for best original score for The Milagro Beanfield War, as well as Oscar nominations for The Champ, The Fabulous Baker Boys, The Firm, Havana, Heaven Can Wait, and On Golden Pond. He also received a Best Original Song nomination for "It Might Be You" from the film Tootsie. Six of the fourteen cuts on the soundtrack from The Graduate are his. Other film scores he has composed include Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?, Three Days of the Condor, The Goonies, Tequila Sunrise, Hope Floats, Random Hearts, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Mulholland Falls and The Firm. In addition, he also composed the original opening fanfare for film studio TriStar Pictures.^[4]

For television, he was the conductor for The Andy Williams Show (1963–1965) and the composer of the theme songs for such series as It Takes a Thief (1968), The Name of the Game (1968), Dan August (1970), The Sandy Duncan Show (1971–1972), Maude (1972), Good Times (1974), Baretta (1975), St. Elsewhere (1982), and, for Televisa in Mexico, Tres Generaciones (1987). He also composed music for individual episodes of each of those shows. His other TV credits include The Wild Wild West (1966), The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966), and Columbo: Prescription: Murder (1968). He also did the theme song for One Life to Live (1968) from 1984–1992. Since its beginning in 1984, the Minneapolis-St. Paul regional weekly news and affair program Almanac has used Grusin's "Anthem Internationale" from his 1982 album Out of the Shadows as their theme.

Grusin assisted in 1966 as musical director and arranger also for two years the Catarina Valente TV show and lived longer times in Amsterdam.

About 35 Grusin CD titles are currently available including soundtracks, originals, collections, and homages to jazz greats George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, and Henry Mancini. Recently he has turned his attention to his own compositions. As in much of his career, these defy easy classification. They can be heard on CD's in collaboration with major artists including Lee Ritenour, James Taylor, and Renée Fleming. In addition to Grusin's jazz, film work and other collaborations, he has also lent his talents as a producer / arranger / musician to numerous albums by artists including Paul Simon, Sérgio Mendes, Quincy Jones, Al Jarreau, Patti Austin, Dave Valentin and Sadao Watanabe. Billy Joel has also on occasion tapped Grusin for horn and string arrangements – Grusin arranged the horns on "Half a Mile Away" for Joel's 52nd Street album, and contributed horn and string arrangements to Joel's 1982 concept album, The Nylon Curtain.

Grusin and Larry Rosen co-founded GRP Records in 1978. In 1994, GRP was in charge of MCA's jazz operations. Founders Grusin and Rosen left in 1995 and were replaced by Tommy LiPuma. In 1997, Grusin and Rosen co-founded N2K Encoded Music (after renamed N-Coded Music).

He received honorary doctorates from Berklee College of Music in 1988 and University of Colorado, College of Music in 1989. Grusin was initiated into the Beta Chi Chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia at the University of Colorado in 1953.

Grusin is married to Nan Newton. He is the father of music editor Stuart Grusin, music editor and musician Scott Grusin, and aerospace engineer Michael Grusin. He is the stepfather of artist Annie Vought, and elder brother of keyboardist Don Grusin and sister Dee Grusin.

Awards and honors

Academy Awards

• Award, Best Original Score, The Milagro Beanfield War (1988)
• Nomination, Best Original Score: Heaven Can Wait (1978), The Champ (1979), On Golden Pond (1981), The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), Havana (1990), The Firm (1993)
• Nomination, Best Original Song: "It Might Be You" (1982)

Grammy Awards

• Award, Best Arrangement on an Instrumental: "Early A.M. Attitude" (1986), "Suite" for The Milagro Beanfield War (1990), "Bess You Is My Woman/I Loves You Porgy" (1991), "Mood Indigo" (1993), "Three Cowboy Songs" (1994)
• Award, Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocals: "My Funny Valentine" by Michelle Pfeiffer (1989), "Mean Old Man" by James Taylor (2002)
• Award, Best Album Original Score Written for Motion Picture or Television: The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989),
• Nomination, Best Original Score: Selena

Golden Globe Awards

• Nomination, Best Original Score: The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), Havana (1990), For the Boys (1991)

Other

• Charles E. Lutton Man of Music Award, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, 1991

Discography

As leader

• Subways Are for Sleeping (Epic, 1962)
• Piano, Strings, and Moonlight (Epic, 1963)
• Kaleidoscope (Columbia, 1964)
• Divorce American Style (United Artists, 1967)
• The Graduate (Columbia, 1968)
• Candy (Epic, 1969)
• Three Days of the Condor (DRG/EMI, 1975)
• Discovered Again! (Sheffield Lab, 1976)
• One of a Kind (GRP, 1977)
• The Champ (Varèse Sarabande, 1979)
• Mountain Dance (GRP, 1979)
• The Electric Horseman (Varèse Sarabande, 1979)
• Dave Grusin Presents GRP All-Stars Live in Japan (Arista, 1981)
• Out of the Shadows (GRP, 1982)
• Night Lines (GRP, 1983)
• Dave Grusin and the NY-LA Dream Band (GRP, 1984)
• Harlequin (with Lee Ritenour) (GRP, 1985)
• Lucas (Varèse Sarabande, 1986)
• Cinemagic (GRP, 1987)
• GRP Live in Session (GRP, 1988)
• Sticks and Stones (with Don Grusin) (GRP, 1988)
• Migration (GRP, 1989)
• The Fabulous Baker Boys (GRP, 1989)
• The Bonfire of the Vanities (Atlantic, 1990)
• Havana (GRP, 1990)
• The Gershwin Connection (GRP, 1991)
• GRP Super Live in Concert (GRP, 1992)
• Homage to Duke (GRP, 1993)
• The Firm (GRP, 1993)
• The Cure (GRP, 1995)
• Two for the Road (GRP, 1996)
• Selena (Angel, 1997)
• West Side Story (N-Coded, 1997)
• Random Hearts (Sony, 1999)
• Two Worlds with Lee Ritenour (Decca, 2000)
• Dinner with Friends (Jellybean, 2001)
• Now Playing (GRP, 2004)
• The Yakuza limited edition, 3000 copies (Film Score Monthly, 2005)
• Lucas limited edition, 2000 copies (Varèse Sarabande, 2006)
• Author! Author! limited edition, 2000 copies (Varèse Sarabande, 2007)
• The Scorpio Letters limited edition of 3000 copies (Film Score Monthly, 2007)
• Amparo (Decca, 2008)
• The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (Varèse Sarabande, 2008)
• The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter limited edition, 3000 copies (Film Score Monthly, 2009)
• An Evening with Dave Grusin (Heads Up, 2010)
• One Night Only! (C.A.R.E./Intergroove, 2011)^[5]

As sideman

• Crawl Space, Art Farmer (1972)
• Equinox Express Elevator, Howard Roberts (1972)
• The Man Incognito, Alphonse Mouzon (1975)
• Havana Candy, Patti Austin (1977)
• Can't Hide Love, Carmen McRae (1979)
• A Secret Place, Grover Washington, Jr. (1979)
• Love Light, Yutaka Yokokura (1981)
• Little Big Horn, Gerry Mulligan (1983)
• Curves Ahead, The Rippingtons (1991)

Filmography

See also

• List of music arrangers
• List of jazz arrangers

References

External links

• Dave Grusin on IMDb
• Music video sampler: Mountain Dance on YouTube
• Dave Grusin Archive