This really isn't a good year for our beloved composers.

r.i.p. Gil Melle

I grew up with a lot of this man's excellent TV scores; This is going to upset Graham in particular I think!

Gil basically retired from doing filmwork in the early 1990's. His last public performance was in 1995 at The Blue Note in New York City, and has worked on-and-off on new material for the past couple of years. He has enough music for several cd releases, so we will see what happens in the near future. I already sent Graham and others an email about this since I sent Gil a copy of Graham's article about him.

James

quote:

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Originally posted by Lou Goldberg:
There isn't much Gil on record and you have to watch some pretty obscure films and tv to listen to some of his scores, but his work was always solid. There's a short documentary about him scoring THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN that I saw many years back showing him at work with some electronic percussion device. I wish I could see that footage again. Well, so long.

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Lou,

Gil told me about that documentary, and I would like to know if you remember the name of it? He was also interviewed by Orson Welles for FUTURE SHOCK, but I think his sequence was edited out. I had to hunt for many of his obscure films out on video and DVD (my favorites are FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY, THE SENTINEL, and THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR). I also have THE ORGANIZATION and EMBRYO.

Before the days of the Internet, doing any kind of investigation was laborious in the extreme, but I gradually learned snippets of information from browsing film books and jazz encyclopedias at public libraries and in bookshops. I didn't much care for some of his 80s synth work for TV, but it was consistent with the restless, innovative spirit of the artist. Here was someone who was forging ahead, and I get the impression that Gil Mellé wasn't really given to bouts of nostalgia. He didn't seem to even live the day - he lived the future.

Obituaries

Gil Mellé

Gil Mellé, legendary jazz innovator and composer of more than 125 film scores, died Thursday at the age of 72. The cause of death is apparent heart failure.

Mellé, a Malibu resident since 1974, enjoyed a vigorous and varied life, and he was painting and working on a new jazz project developed with Blue Note Records until his last hours. Mellé was not ill and friends say he remained youthful to the end.

Perhaps best known for his composition for the science fiction thriller "Andromeda Strain," the first all-synthesized film core, Mellé worked with major filmmakers, including Steven Spielberg ("The Psychiatrist" and "Savage"), Larry Cohen ("Bone") and Sidney Poitier ("The Organization"). His television credits include the ABC motion picture "The Six Million Dollar Man" and themes for NBC's "Night Gallery" and "Kolchak: The Night Stalker." Mellé's work has been recorded by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Symphony and the National Philharmonic Orchestra of London.

An early pioneer of live electronic jazz, Mellé invented and built all the instruments he needed for his performances, including drum machines and electronic saxophones. Mellé and his group "Gil Mellé's Electronauts" performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival and throughout the country in the late 1960s. Prior to his work in electronica, Mellé had established a successful career in acoustic jazz, recording more than a dozen albums for Prestige and Blue Note Records as a composer, saxophonist and band leader. Blue Note founder Alfred Lions personally signed Mellé when he was just 18 years old. Lions encouraged Mellé to explore his musical and artistic gifts, commissioning him to create dozens of album covers for label mates, including Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and Thelonious Monk.

While an emerging musician in the Greenwich Village jazz scene of the 1950s, Mellé exhibited modern paintings that are still prized by collectors worldwide. Over the last 10 years, Mellé devoted his talents to the creation of electronic paintings, a style he termed "Cybercloissonism." His work was often presented at large-format transparencies mounted in light boxes. These digital paintings created on custom-built computers were exhibited in Beverly Hills, New York City and London, and are part of significant collections worldwide. Mellé produced a commissioned DVD combining his digital art and digital music, and was working on similar projects when he died.

A true Renaissance man, Mellé also amassed an important collection of antique microscopes and was a past president of the L.A. Microscopical Society. His scientific papers form the basis for much scholarship in the filed.

Mellé is survived by his wife of 40 years, Denise Mellé.

A memorial garden is being created for Mellé in Malibu. In lieu of flowers, donate a plant to the garden by calling Cosentino's Nursery at 456.6026.

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Posted: Wed., Nov. 3, 2004, 4:12pm PT

Gil Melle

Composer

By JON BURLINGAME

Gil Melle, the pioneering electronic-music composer who scored "The Andromeda Strain," "Night Gallery" and "Fatal Vision," died of a heart attack Oct. 28 in Malibu. He was 72.
Funeral services for Melle will be held at 4 p.m. Monday at Our Lady of Malibu church in Malibu.

Melle, who was also a jazz saxophonist and respected visual artist, was perhaps best known as a cutting-edge creator of electronically generated music.

His 1970 theme for "Night Gallery" was the first all-electronic main title for a TV series, and his music for 1971 sci-fi thriller "The Andromeda Strain" became the first all-synthesizer score for a feature film.

In the 1970s and '80s, Melle also composed traditional orchestral music for TV. He scored the TV movies "My Sweet Charlie," "That Certain Summer," four early episodes of "Columbo" and the first four episodes of the cult series "Kolchak: The Night Stalker."

His music lent itself to sci-fi and horror projects, including orchestral scores for the pilot of "The Six Million Dollar Man" and the four-hour "Frankenstein: The True Story" (1973), which he recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Melle created landmark electronic scores for sci-fi TV movies including "A Cold Night's Death" and the four-hour "World War III." He wrote and performed music for several telefilms dealing with sensational murders, including "Fatal Vision," Ted Bundy story "The Deliberate Stranger" and "The Case of the Hillside Strangler."

He was born in 1931 in Jersey City, N.J., and signed with Blue Note Records as a jazz performer at age 19. His artistic abilities also led to album-cover paintings for Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins, as well as art-gallery showings in New York.

Melle and his group, the Electronauts, debuted electronic jazz at the 1967 Monterey Jazz Festival. The following year, Verve released his "Tome VI," the first all-electronic jazz album. His last album was "Mindscape" in 1991.

He is survived by his wife of 40 years, Denise; a daughter and three sisters.

Read the full article at: http://www.variety.com/story.asp?l=story&a=VR1117912965&c=25

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Two things still sort of puzzle me about Gil Mellé - I always found him an enigmatic character anyway, but I'd love to know the following:

1) What was his motivation for working on all those bad films? There are plenty in his filmography on the level of GOLD OF THE AMAZON WOMEN (which has an absolutely great score). Workaholics like Jerry Goldsmith would always have to score plenty of turkeys, but someone like Gil Mellé, who had so many other strings to his bow and always seemed, to me at least, to exude a kind of detached intellectualism... I don't know, maybe I've got the man all wrong, but something just doesn't fit there.

2) Why no score releases? I know that much of the composer's work was done for Universal, but not ALL of it. Again, I could be wrong, but I get the feeling that Gil Mellé was always looking ahead to the future and had no desire to dwell on the past, so maybe he wasn't interested in going back and participating in the release of film score CDs. But that's kind of strange too.

quote:

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Originally posted by Graham Watt:
1) What was his motivation for working on all those bad films?

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That's a good question, Graham. I'm currently listening to a 'private' recording of his STARSHIP INVASIONS, and I'm struck by how immensely inventive, intelligent, complex and varied the score is - for what looks like a corny low budget sci-fi flick.

The score - a long one at 70+ minutes - is overflowing with trademark Melle touches - the characteristic use of brass, strings, keyboards and drum kit, with electronics adding colour and atmosphere. At one point he adds pounding snare drums to a cue that sounds like a close cousin to The President's Plane Is Missing.

Yes, some of the movies Gil Mellé scored were absolute zeros. But the music was very often excellent. Just look at GOLD OF THE AMAZON WOMEN (or rather don't). An absolutely abominable, laughable 70s TV Movie which is even worse than a lower-berth Tarzan thingy way out of time. The film is a zero, but the score is absolutely amazing.