Michael Stevens (composer)

Last updated
Michael Stevens
GenresFilm score, Jazz
Occupation(s)Composer, Musician

Michael Stevens is an American musician and composer. He has collaborated with Kyle Eastwood on numerous projects, including the film scores to Clint Eastwood's films, Mystic River (2003), Million Dollar Baby (2004), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), Gran Torino (2008), and Invictus (2009). He was nominated with Kyle Eastwood for a 2006 Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Original Score for Letters from Iwo Jima. [1] In 2008, he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for the song "Gran Torino". [2]

Selected works

Stevens has worked extensively as a composer and in the music department for various films, television, and video productions. Some of his notable contributions include:

Additionally, Stevens has contributed to film scores and worked as a music arranger and performer in the music departments of major films, including:

Stevens has also been involved in soundtracks, contributing original music or performances in:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clint Eastwood</span> American actor and director (born 1930)

Clinton Eastwood Jr. is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western TV series Rawhide, Eastwood rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No Name" in Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy of spaghetti Westerns during the mid-1960s and as antihero cop Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made Eastwood an enduring cultural icon of masculinity. Elected in 1986, Eastwood served for two years as the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clint Eastwood filmography</span>

Clint Eastwood is an American film actor, film director, film producer, singer, composer and lyricist. He has appeared in over 60 films. His career has spanned 65 years and began with small uncredited film roles and television appearances. Eastwood has acted in multiple television series, including the eight-season series Rawhide (1959–1965). Although he appeared in several earlier films, mostly uncredited, his breakout film role was as the Man with No Name in the Sergio Leone–directed Dollars Trilogy: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), which weren't released in the United States until 1967/68. In 1971, Eastwood made his directorial debut with Play Misty for Me. Also that year, he starred as San Francisco police inspector Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry. The film received critical acclaim, and spawned four more films: Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983), and The Dead Pool (1988).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kyle Eastwood</span> American jazz bassist and composer

Kyle Eastwood is an American jazz bassist and film composer. He studied film at the University of Southern California for two years before embarking on a music career. After becoming a session player in the early 1990s and leading his own quartet, he released his first solo album, From There to Here, in 1998. His album The View From Here was released in 2013 by Jazz Village. In addition to his solo albums, Eastwood has composed music for nine of his father's, Clint Eastwood, films. Eastwood plays fretted and fretless electric bass guitar and double bass.

<i>Flags of Our Fathers</i> (film) 2006 film by Clint Eastwood

Flags of Our Fathers is a 2006 American war drama film directed, co-produced, and scored by Clint Eastwood and written by William Broyles Jr. and Paul Haggis. It is based on the 2000 book of the same name written by James Bradley and Ron Powers about the 1945 Battle of Iwo Jima, the five Marines and one Navy corpsman who were involved in raising the flag on Iwo Jima, and the after effects of that event on their lives. Taken from the American viewpoint of the Battle of Iwo Jima, the film is a companion piece to Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima, which depicts the same battle from the Japanese viewpoint; the two films were shot back to back.

Lloyd Henry "Bummy" Bumstead was an American cinematic art director and production designer. In a career that spanned nearly 70 years, Bumstead began as a draftsman in RKO Pictures' art department and later served as an art director or production designer on more than 90 feature films. He won Academy Awards for Best Art Direction for To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and The Sting (1973). He was also nominated for Academy Awards for his work on Vertigo (1958) and Unforgiven (1992).

Robert Lorenz is an American film producer and director, best known for his collaborations with Clint Eastwood. He has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture three times, for Mystic River (2003), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), and American Sniper (2014). He has also directed Trouble with the Curve (2012) and The Marksman (2021).

Phyllis Huffman was a casting director for film and television. She received numerous award nominations from the Casting Society of America (CSA) throughout her career, winning twice.

The 19th Chicago Film Critics Association Awards, given by the CFCA on December 28, 2006 honored the best in film for 2006.

The 32nd Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, given by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA), honored the best in film for 2006.

Every year since its inception, the Japanese Academy has awarded the Japan Academy Film Prize for Outstanding Foreign Language Film. The year that any given film is nominated is not based on the film's domestic release date but rather on the date it is released in Japan. As delays of over four months are not uncommon, many films are nominated in Japan the year following their release to the Japanese market. In fact, not one of the five films nominated for the 2007 Academy Award for Best Picture had been released in Japan by February 15, 2008, the date of the Japan Academy Prize Ceremony.

The David di Donatello for Best International Film, known as the David di Donatello for Best Foreign Film prior to 2022, is a category in the David di Donatello Awards, described as "Italy’s answer to the Oscars", presented annually by the Accademia del Cinema Italiano since the 1959 edition. The category is specifically for films not competing for European honours. No awards were granted during the 1960 and 1961 editions, from 1965 to 1971, and in 1981. Starting from the 2019 edition, the award also includes films that previously would have belonged to the category of Best European Film.

<i>Letters from Iwo Jima</i> 2006 American film by Clint Eastwood

Letters from Iwo Jima is a 2006 Japanese-language American war film directed and co-produced by Clint Eastwood, starring Ken Watanabe and Kazunari Ninomiya. The film portrays the Battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers and is a companion piece to Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, which depicts the same battle from the American viewpoint; the two films were shot back to back. Letters from Iwo Jima is almost entirely in Japanese with a few English sequences, despite being co-produced by American companies DreamWorks Pictures, Malpaso Productions and Amblin Entertainment.

Joel Cox is an American film editor. He is best known for collaborating with Clint Eastwood in over 30 films.

<i>Gran Torino</i> 2008 American film by Clint Eastwood

Gran Torino is a 2008 American drama film directed and produced by Clint Eastwood, who also starred in the film. The film features a large Hmong American cast, as well as one of Eastwood's younger sons, Scott. Eastwood's oldest son of record, Kyle, composed the film's score with Michael Stevens, while Jamie Cullum and Clint Eastwood provide the theme song.

Gary D. Roach, sometimes credited as Gary Roach, is an American film editor. He is best known for collaborating with Clint Eastwood on 12 films.

<i>Invictus</i> (film) 2009 biographical sports drama film

Invictus is a 2009 biographical sports film directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, making it the third collaboration between Eastwood and Freeman after Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004). The story is based on the 2008 John Carlin book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation about the events in South Africa before and during the 1995 Rugby World Cup. The Springboks were not expected to perform well, the team having only recently returned to high-level international competition following the dismantling of apartheid—the country was hosting the World Cup, thus earning an automatic entry. Freeman portrays South African President Nelson Mandela while Damon played Francois Pienaar, the captain of the Springboks, the South Africa rugby union team.

American actor and filmmaker Clint Eastwood, an audiophile, has had a strong passion for music all his life, particularly jazz and country and western music. He is a pianist and composer in addition to his main career as an actor, director, and film producer. He developed as a ragtime pianist early on, and in late 1959 he produced the album Cowboy Favorites, which was released on the Cameo label. Jazz has played an important role in Eastwood's life from a young age and although he was never successful as a musician, he passed on the influence to his son Kyle Eastwood, a successful jazz bassist and composer. Eastwood has his own Warner Bros. Records-distributed imprint, Malpaso Records, as part of his deal with Warner Brothers, which has released all of the scores of Eastwood's films from The Bridges of Madison County onward. Eastwood co-wrote "Why Should I Care" with Linda Thompson and Carole Bayer Sager, which was recorded by Diana Krall for the film True Crime (1999). "Why Should I Care" was also released on Krall's album When I Look in Your Eyes.

Walt Martin was an American production sound mixer. He was nominated for Academy Awards in the category Best Sound Mixing for the 2006 film Flags of Our Fathers and the 2014 film American Sniper. He worked on more than 70 films. He died of vasculitis on July 24, 2014, aged 69. His final film, American Sniper, was released posthumously.

References

  1. "Michael Stevens on IMDb" . Retrieved October 8, 2024.
  2. "Michael Stevens on IMDb" . Retrieved October 8, 2024.