Birth name Richard Howard Band Years active 1978–present Instruments Guitar, Synthesizer | Occupation(s) Composer Genres Film score Name Richard Band | |
Born December 28, 1953 (age 70)
Los Angeles, California, USA ( 1953-12-28 ) Website | ||
Richard Band
Richard Howard Band (born December 28, 1953 in Los Angeles, California) is an American composer of film music. He has scored more than 70 films, including From Beyond, which won the award for Best Original Soundtrack at the Sitges - Catalan International Film Festival. His score for Re-Animator was lauded by the magazine Music From the Movies, which said, "Band’s music is dark and direct, creating an intense and eerie atmosphere, but always with a humorous touch.... Surely, Richard Band is one of the most underrated composers in the film business."
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Since 2000, Band has done few films, though he has scored episodes of such television shows as Stargate SG-1, Walker: Texas Ranger. He also developed the campaign music for many shows on the WB, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Smallville.
Band is the son of the cult film director Albert Band, and the brother of director Charles Band. He has a nephew Alex Band, and a niece, Taryn Band.
Career
Since the late 1970s Band has been composing film music for horror and science fiction films regularly. His first notable score was for 1977's Laserblast, which he co-composed with Joel Goldsmith (son of famed composer Jerry Goldsmith). By the mid-80's Band was renowned for scoring horror films by employing strong, memorable and often very melodic themes. Films like Mutant (aka Night Shadows), The Alchemist, The House on Sorority Row, Ghostwarrior, Troll and The Day Time Ended all feature beautiful and lyrical themes that seem to operate as the antithesis of the genre for which the films were produced. As Band explains in the liner notes of Laserblast, he believes film scores should exist “to add the third dimension to a two-dimensional medium.” From Beyond, Band's second collaboration with Stuart Gordon following 1985's Re-Animator (performed by the Rome Philharmonic Orchestra) is considered a horror classic within the film score circle, featuring odd tonalities and creative, otherworldly orchestration. He would later go on to score Gordon’s subsequent films such as The Pit and the Pendulum and 1995’s Castle Freak, the later of which featured some inventive writing for a string quartet. 1994's Shrunken Heads (on which he collaborated with his more mainstream counterpart Danny Elfman) features big band jazz music, while Dragonworld, Paramount's kid-friendly fantasy film of the same year pitted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra against a plethora of folksy, Celtic and ethnic influences. Since around 1990 onward Band's work has declined in regularity and scope. Today he works primarily in television, with sparse film projects coming his way. In 2006 he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for his work on the television series, Masters of Horror.