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Composer of ballets, symphonies and stage music whose work on Elia Kazan's Broadway production of "Death of a Salesman" moved the director to bring him to Hollywood to compose the score for "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951). Lyrical and jazz-influenced, the score earned North the first of 15 Oscar nominations (he never won) and introduced the sparer, more economic style of orchestration that eventually displaced the lusher scores of the 1930s and 40s. North's subsequent work ranged from the intimate dramas "The Member of the Wedding" (1953) and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966), to the period epics "Spartacus" (1960) and "Cleopatra" (1963), and the western "Cheyenne Autumn" (1964). He also scored several of John Huston's later films, including "The Misfits" (1961), "Wise Blood" (1979), "Under the Volcano" (1984), "Prizzi's Honor" (1985) and "The Dead" (1987).
Composer of ballets, symphonies and stage music whose work on Elia Kazan's Broadway production of "Death of a Salesman" moved the director to bring him to Hollywood to compose the score for "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951). Lyrical and jazz-influenced, the score earned North the first of 15 Oscar nominations (he never won) and introduced the sparer, more economic style of orchestration that eventually displaced the lusher scores of the 1930s and 40s.
North's subsequent work ranged from the intimate dramas "The Member of the Wedding" (1953) and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966), to the period epics "Spartacus" (1960) and "Cleopatra" (1963), and the western "Cheyenne Autumn" (1964). He also scored several of John Huston's later films, including "The Misfits" (1961), "Wise Blood" (1979), "Under the Volcano" (1984), "Prizzi's Honor" (1985) and "The Dead" (1987).
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Education
Notes
North, art director Roland Anderson and sound technician Kevin O'Connell all hold the dubious distinction of being the individuals who received the most Academy Award nominations, 15, without winning. In 1985, North was awarded an honorary Oscar.
"My big influence in life was probably Duke Ellington, in terms of the way he used jazz. I was also inspired by the late Russian and French composers--Prokofiev, Ravel, Debussy." --Alex North in 1986 interview, quoted in his The New York Times obituary, September 11, 1991.
North composed ballets for Martha Graham, Agnes de Mille and Anna Sokolow including "American Lyric" (1937), "Daddy Long Legs", "Mal de siecle", and "Wall Street Ballet". He wrote the opera "Hither and Thither of Danny Dither" and the "Rhapsody for piano and orchestra" (1941). His "Revue for Clarinet and Orchestra", commissioned by Benny Goodman, premiered by Goodman and Leonard Bernstein with the New York City Symphony in 1946. North wrote three symphonies (in 1947, 1968, and 1971), three symphonic suites from film scores, "Holiday Set" (1948) and cantatas for chorus and orchestra ("Morning Star" 1947, based on the Nuremberg Trials and "Negro Mother" 1948 in collaboration with Langston Hughes).
Received a Guggenheim Fellowship (1947 and 1948)
Given the 1975-76 Heritage Wrangler Award for "Bite the Bullet" (1975).
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