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Elmer Bernstein
April 4, 1922 - August 18, 2004
born in New York, NY, composed during the Contemporary period
Biography
If Elmer Bernstein had realized his childhood aspirations, he might have been a concert pianist. Instead, he has been a major force in film music and popular culture for more than ffity years.

Bernstein showed a consuming interest in the piano at an early age. When Bernstein was thirteen, his music teacher arranged an audition for Aaron Copland, who in turn arranged for Bernstein to study with one of his own students. Bernstein enrolled at the Juilliard School as a piano student and also took up composition, for which his teachers included Stefan Wolpe and Roger Sessions. Assigned to an army entertainment unit during World War II, Bernstein first worked as an arranger of traditional American songs for Glenn Miller, which led to a chance to compose for Armed Forces Radio. Bernstein wrote the music for more than eighty broadcasts and wanted to pursue a career as a composer once the war was over. His break came in 1949 when he was commissioned to write the score for a UN radio program on the founding of the State of Israel, which led to an offer to write music for NBC. That, in turn, got Bernstein a chance to come to Hollywood as a film composer.

Bernstein's professional breakthrough took place in 1955 with Otto Preminger's film The Man With The Golden Arm, a drama dealing with drug addiction.
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