Alex North

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Academy Award-nominated American composer Alex North studied at the Curtis Institute and Juilliard, and with Aaron Copland and may be best remembered for his scores to many classic Hollywood films, including A Streetcar Named Desire, Spartacus, The Misfits, Viva Zapata!, and The Bad Seed, which are featured on the Nonesuch Film Series album The Film Music of Alex North.

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Academy Award-nominated American composer Alex North may be best remembered for his scores to many classic Hollywood films. He was born in 1910 in Chester, Pennsylvania, and began formal musical studies on scholarship at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. His studies next took him to the Juilliard School and to the Moscow Conservatory. When North returned to the US after his time in Moscow, he studied privately with Aaron Copland and Ernst Toch and quickly began working as a composer for theater and film as well as a dance accompanist.

North’s work in the theater led to his first Hollywood film score, for the classic film adaption of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. His controversial score set the precedent for the rest of his Hollywood career, during which he would find himself both at the cutting edge and in great demand. North's other notable scores include Spartacus, The Misfits, Cleopatra, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, and The Devil’s Brigade. Stanley Kubrick commissioned North to score his 1968 masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey but chose to replace North’s score shortly before the film’s release.

Nonesuch released a collection of some of North's most memorable work for the Nonesuch Film Series on the album The Film Music of Alex North. The New York Times said North's "estimable stylistic arsenal" is on display in the collection.

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Latest Release

  • July 25, 1997

    The "estimable stylistic arsenal" of composer Alex North, says the New York Times, is on display in this collection, including music from A Streetcar Named Desire, Spartacus, The Misfits, Viva Zapata!, and The Bad Seed, "which draws on everything from the childlike simplicity of a borrowed French folk song to edgy, dramatic modernism to give dimension to the film's portrayal of a murderously devious child."

News

  • July 9, 2014

    In conjunction with Nonesuch Records at BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music's series of events celebrating the 50th anniversary of Nonesuch Records, BAMcinématek presents Nonesuch Records on Film, a salute to the label’s rich catalogue of movie soundtracks with a series featuring some of the most memorable film scores of the last 50 years from Leonard Rosenman, Alex North, Toru Takemitsu, Georges Delerue, and more. Special guest appearances include Philip Glass with a screening of Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters and John Adams with Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love.

  • November 15, 2010

    Martin Scorsese has selected 15 films by fellow Academy Award-winning director Elia Kazan for the Elia Kazan Film Collection, a new, 18-disc box set, capturing what NPR's Fresh Air recently described as "some of the most mythic performances in film history." Included are three films whose scores were recorded for the Nonesuch Film Series: A Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata!, and East of Eden.

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About Alex North

  • Academy Award-nominated American composer Alex North may be best remembered for his scores to many classic Hollywood films. He was born in 1910 in Chester, Pennsylvania, and began formal musical studies on scholarship at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. His studies next took him to the Juilliard School and to the Moscow Conservatory. When North returned to the US after his time in Moscow, he studied privately with Aaron Copland and Ernst Toch and quickly began working as a composer for theater and film as well as a dance accompanist.

    North’s work in the theater led to his first Hollywood film score, for the classic film adaption of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. His controversial score set the precedent for the rest of his Hollywood career, during which he would find himself both at the cutting edge and in great demand. North's other notable scores include Spartacus, The Misfits, Cleopatra, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, and The Devil’s Brigade. Stanley Kubrick commissioned North to score his 1968 masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey but chose to replace North’s score shortly before the film’s release.

    Nonesuch released a collection of some of North's most memorable work for the Nonesuch Film Series on the album The Film Music of Alex North. The New York Times said North's "estimable stylistic arsenal" is on display in the collection.

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