A mourning birthday for Clint Eastwood. After Anthony James, it's Lennie Niehaus's turn to bow out. The film composer, saxophonist and friend of the actor and director died at the age of 90 on May 28 at his daughter's home in Redlands, California according to The Hollywood Reporter .
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Son of a violinist, Lennie Niehaus was born June 11, 1929 in Saint Louis, Missouri. In an interview in 2009, he tells how the saxophone became his favorite instrument: " I liked Harry James, and when I heard the tenor saxophonist Corky Corcoran playing The Mole in 1942, I wanted to play the saxophone tenor ". An instrument that did not delight his violinist father. " My father was in shock," he recalls. He said to me: “The saxophone! You play either the piano or the violin, not the saxophone. You will end up playing in a brothel ”. In fact, he was right. I played in little funky clubs later . ”
While studying music at Los Angeles City College, Lennie Niehaus graduated from Cal State Los Angeles in 1951 as a music teacher. After playing the alto saxophone and making arrangements for Phil Carreón and his orchestra, he set off with the prestigious Stan Kenton orchestra for six months. His musical career then took a turn when he was called up for the Korean War.
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It was in 1953, in the army, that Lennie Niehaus and Clint Eastwood met. The Hollywood legend served him as a swimming instructor at Fort Ord in Monterey, California. But it was jazz that sealed their friendship. " I played it in one of the clubs at our base, and Clint ran the bar ," he wrote in an essay devoted to the director. When I was not working, I used to play in a small jazz club near Santa Cruz on Sundays, and he was there. "
After his release in 1954, the saxophonist played in the Stan Kenton orchestra until 1959 where he signed a hundred arrangements. He then went on to compose music in Hollywood and made arrangements for The King Sisters, Mel Tormé, Dean Martin and Carol Burnett. In 1965, he worked as an orchestrator for the television comedy Papa Schultz .
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The young composer then began to work and orchestrate for Jerry Fielding, film composers. Together, they collaborated on many feature films including Les Chiens de paille (1971), L'Homme de la loi (1971), Le Flambeur (1974) and La Chouette Équipe (1976). But this collaboration also allowed him to find his great friend Clint Eastwood in Josey Wales outlaw (1976) or The inspector never gives up (1976).
Lennie Niehaus officially launched as a composer in 1984 with two films: La Corde raide and Haut les flingues! Two films in which we find Clint Eastwood. It was the start of a long collaboration between the filmmaker and the composer with more than fifteen feature films including Bird (1988), Impitoyable (1992) and Sur la route de Madison (1995).
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His consecration arrives on television by writing the music for the film Lush Life . He won an Emmy Award in 1993 for this film in which Forest Whitaker plays a jazz saxophonist. He was again nominated in 2008 for his work on the television movie Mitch Albom's For One More Day , broadcast on ABC.
Besides her film career, Lennie Niehaus has also produced six jazz albums. Solo projects noticed by the community but also by the press. The New York Times describes his compositions as " linear and at times dissonant, cultivated and catchy ". To the delight of our ears.
