MOVIE NEWS – Angelo Badalamenti has collaborated with Lynch on numerous projects and albums, as well as with the likes of Paul McCartney, David Bowie and Nina Simone.

Angelo Badalamenti, the acclaimed composer who created haunting music for David Lynch projects such as Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive, has died aged 85.

Badalamenti died of natural causes Sunday at his New Jersey home surrounded by family; his niece told The Hollywood Reporter.

Lynch and Badalamenti became close friends and collaborators. They worked together on films including Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. Badalamenti also appeared on screen as the coffee-loving gangster Luigi Castigliane in Mulholland Drive. In Blue Velvet, he played the piano alongside Isabella Rossellini.

A classically trained musician, his varied career has seen him work with the likes of Nina Simone, David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Shirley Bassey, Marianne Faithfull, Liza Minnelli, the Pet Shop Boys and LL Cool J. He has composed for such well-known themes as Inside the Actors Studio and the 1992 Olympic Games torch theme.

For his first collaboration with Lynch, Blue Velvet (1986), he was hired as Rossellini’s vocal coach. Lynch asked him to write a tune for the soundtrack and the rest, as they say, is history.

In addition, Badalamenti wrote most of the music for Twin Peaks without ever seeing the footage. His work on the series has earned him a Grammy Award and three Emmy nominations, and the soundtrack has gone gold in 25 countries. He would sometimes visit Lynch’s sets to play live music during filming so that the actors could “feel the vibe”. The filmmaker was greatly inspired by his intuition for creating moods.

Born in Brooklyn in 1937, Badalamenti played piano and horns as a teenager before going to music school on a full scholarship. He graduated from the Manhattan School of Music in 1960. During college breaks, he accompanied performers at resorts in the Catskill Mountains. Eventually, he got a job with a music label, writing songs under the pseudonym Andy Badale for artists such as Shirley Bassey and Nina Simone. His first film score was for the 1973 film Gordon’s War. His third film score was for 1986’s Blue Velvet.

Badalamenti, Lynch and Julee Cruise released two albums, Floating into the Night (1989) and The Voice of Love (1993). He and Lynch also recorded a jazz album, Thought Gang, in the early 1990s, but it was not released for another two decades.

He later collaborated with Paul Schrader, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Jane Campion, Danny Boyle and Eli Roth, to name but a few of his many film music projects.

Badalamenti received a lifetime achievement award at the 2008 World Soundtrack Awards and, in 2011, the prestigious Henry Mancini Award, presented to him by Lynch.

Source: elmundo.es