How would Jerry Goldsmith sit among these? I'm actually not sure, myself...

Michael Nyman and Krzysztof Komeda are two others.

Thanks for the contributions thus far...there have been a few mentioned who I'm not familiar with, so I have some research to do.

Any specific works you would recommend or should I just start digging and see what comes up?

His music for Planet of the Apes is pretty avant-garde for Hollywood. So is the score for Forbiden Planet by Louis & Bebe Barron.


Dmitri Shostakovich's score for the first film with sound (Alone) in the Soviet Union in 1931, was also the first film to use a theremin.

I'll definitely have to look into that one!

Krzysztof Komeda composed many of the films for Roman Polanski. The two most famous being Knife in Water and Rosemary's Baby. He also worked for Ingmar Bergman. He died shortly after Rosemary came out from the injuries of a car accident.

He is also one of the European Jazz greats. Since Jazz was considered illegal in most of the Communist world he had to change his name. His most famous recording would be Astigmatic, which the Penguin Guide gives one of their Crowns.

A Polish label put out a 23 volume box set of his recordings, which includes 6 Vol.'s from his music for films. Tomasz Stanko one of the great trumpet players to come from Europe was a member of his group before going out on his own.

You can also get individual CD's. Astigmatic is Vol. 5 of the set.

Thanks for the info, Satch; helpful as usual (( nice to see you around ))...I've got something to go on now.

Michael Nyman was the first person to use the term minimalism in a review about Cornelius Cardew. His most famous film scores are for films by Peter Greenaway.

It's not like you couldn't have gotten a response faster on IM.

So I'm trying to breathe some life into this forum, sue me!

...but thank you for the additional suggestion.