Biography
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Born
22 March 1937
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Born In
Brooklyn, New York, New York, United States
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Died
11 December 2022 (aged 85)
Angelo Badalamenti (March 22, 1937 - December 11, 2022) was an American composer for film and television, best known for his hauntingly atmospheric work with filmmaker David Lynch, whose collaborations include Blue Velvet, Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the World Soundtrack Awards in 2008.
Angelo Badalamenti was born in Brooklyn, New York, United States to an Italian family. He began taking piano lessons at age eight and spent much of his childhood listening to opera and classical music. He studied at the Eastman School of Music and at Manhattan School of Music where he earned a master's degree in music. A classically trained performer, he spent the early years of his career playing the Catskills resort area, later writing and arranging for singers including Shirley Bassey and country star Mel Tillis. Under the pseudonym Andy Badale, he entered the film industry in 1973, debuting with the score to the action film Gordon's War. Despite subsequent work on such features as Law and Disorder (1974) and Across the Great Divide (1976), Badalamenti remained largely unknown.
In 1986, Badalamenti was hired to compose the score for David Lynch's Blue Velvet; subsequently, they continued their partnership, Badalamenti composing scores for films such as Wild at Heart and The Straight Story. Arguably the most famous collaboration of theirs was the cult hit television series Twin Peaks, for which Badalamenti created one of the most distinctive and evocative theme songs in television history. The duo also wrote and produced a pair of records for ethereal chanteuse Julee Cruise: Floating Into the Night (1989), which contained some songs from Twin Peaks, and The Voice of Love (1993). They also staged an avant-garde musical theater piece titled Industrial Symphony No. 1, which was shown onstage twice in 1989.
In 1996 collaborated with James vocalist Tim Booth, the fruits of their labors being the LP Booth and the Bad Angel. In 2005, Badalamenti composed part of the score for the video game Fahrenheit (known in North America as Indigo Prophecy), bringing his atmospheric ambience to a new medium.
On December 11, 2022, Badalamenti died at his home in Lincoln Park, New Jersey, aged 85.
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