Academy Award-nominated American film composer
Alan Silvestri is perhaps best known for his early work with director
Robert Zemeckis. They followed their first collaboration, 1984's Romancing the Stone, with many more blockbuster classics, including
Forrest Gump (1994) and
The Polar Express (2004). The latter earned
Silvestri an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song for "Believe." His other high-profile works include multiple entries in Marvel's The Avengers franchise, including Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) and
Avengers: Infinity War (2018).
Silvestri took to multiple instruments while growing up in Teaneck, New Jersey, and was already considering a career in music by the age of 15. He attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston for guitar, but after two years, the head of the department learned of an opening playing with Wayne Cochran & the C.C. Riders and recommended
Silvestri.
Silvestri accepted the position but soon found that life on the road wasn't for him. After an arranging job fell through, he ended up stranded in Los Angeles. He got his first break into film while still in his early twenties, when he met Oscar-nominated lyricist Bradford Craig. Through Craig, he got a job scoring the small film The Doberman Gang (1972). That led to composing for other low-budget movies before he found steady work in 1977 scoring the television series ChiPs. After the show was canceled,
Silvestri's career hit a dry period that ended when he teamed up with
Zemeckis on a film that proved to be a big break for all involved: Romancing the Stone (1984).
In the years to follow,
Silvestri and
Zemeckis worked together on many hit films, including
Back to the Future (1985),
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), and Best Picture winner
Forrest Gump (1994). In the meantime,
Silvestri's other scoring assignments included films such as Predator (1987),
The Abyss (1989), The Bodyguard (1992), and The Quick and the Dead (1995). The year 1995 also saw the release of the audio compilation
Voyages: The Film Music Journeys of Alan Silvestri, released by Varèse Sarabande. He remained an in-demand screen composer, working on films such as
Zemeckis' Cast Away (2000) and
Disney's Lilo & Stitch (2002) before earning an Oscar nomination and a Grammy win for the song "Believe" from
The Polar Express (2004), a song he co-wrote with
Glen Ballard.
Silvestri reunited with
Zemeckis for 2007's Beowulf, and he scored his first film for Marvel Studios, Captain America: The First Avenger, in 2011. He returned for
The Avengers the following year. Other highlights of his 2010's career include Emmys for his work on the TV series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014) and more
Zemeckis collaborations: a biopic about high-wire artist Philippe Petite titled
The Walk (2015) and the Brad Pitt thriller
Allied (2016). His scores for
Robert Zemeckis' Welcome to Marwen,
Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One, and Marvel's
Avengers: Infinity War saw release in 2018.
Avengers: Endgame, which arrived in 2019, earned
Silvestri a Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media nomination at the 2020 Grammy Awards. ~ Marcy Donelson & Joslyn Layne