Carter Burwell

Carter Burwell
Birth name	Carter Benedict Burwell
Born	(1955-11-18) November 18, 1955 New York City, New York, United States
Occupation(s)	Film composer

Carter Benedict Burwell (born November 18, 1955) is an American composer of film scores. He is best known as a regular collaborator of the Coen brothers, having scored 17 of their films, among them Raising Arizona (1987), Barton Fink (1991), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), No Country for Old Men (2007), Burn After Reading (2008), and True Grit (2010). Other notable works include the Spike Jonze films Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002) and Where the Wild Things Are (2009), David O. Russell's Three Kings (1999), the miniseries Olive Kitteridge (2014), Anomalisa (2015), and Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine (1998), Mildred Pierce miniseries, and Carol (2015).

Early life and education

Burwell was born in New York City, the son of Natalie (née Benedict), a math teacher, and Charles Burwell, who founded Thaibok Fabrics, Ltd. He graduated from King School in Stamford, Connecticut, and Harvard College, where he was a cartoonist for The Harvard Lampoon.

Career

As a film composer, Burwell has had a long-working relationship with the Coen brothers, providing music for every film they have made (except for O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Inside Llewyn Davis, which had folk music soundtracks produced by T-Bone Burnett). He enjoys working with left-field directors, such as Spike Jonze. Among his best known film scores are Miller's Crossing (1990), And the Band Played On (1993), Conspiracy Theory (1997), Hamlet (2000), The Spanish Prisoner (1997), Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), In Bruges (2008), Twilight (2008), Where The Wild Things Are (2009), The Blind Side (2009), and Breaking Dawn Part 1 (2011). Burwell wrote and recorded the original score for the film The Bourne Identity, but his version was replaced by director Doug Liman for one by John Powell.

Ultimately the ethos of the punk rock movement gave him the impetus to start performing. He performed in New York with several bands, notably The Same, Thick Pigeon, and Radiante. Burwell played in Thick Pigeon with Stanton Miranda; the group released two albums, Too Crazy Cowboys (Factory) and tracks on Miranda Dali (Crepuscule), originally released as a Miranda solo project but later reissued as a Thick Pigeon release. On Burwell's soundtrack for Psycho III, Miranda was a featured singer.

By 1986 he had composed the music for a dance piece, RAB, which premiered at the Avignon Festival. At the same time, he was touring worldwide with The Harmonic Choir, David Hykes' experimental vocal group which specialized in overtone singing.

Burwell used the country music genre as the basis for his score for the Coens' Raising Arizona in 1987. From 1982 to 1987, he worked at the New York Institute of Technology.

His work has alternated between live performance, dance and theatre commissions, and film scoring. His chamber opera The Celestial Alphabet Event was presented in New York in 1991 and other theatre pieces include Mother (1994) and Lucia's Chapters (2007), both with the experimental theatre group Mabou Mines.

In April 2005, Burwell composed and conducted music, performed by The Parabola Ensemble, for the plays Sawbones written and directed by the Coen Brothers, Hope Leaves the Theater written and directed by Charlie Kaufman, and Anomalisa written and directed by Kaufman as Francis Fregoli. This was a segment of the sound-only production Theater of the New Ear, which debuted at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, NY with support from Sirius Satellite Radio, United Talent Agency and Sony Pictures. It was also performed at the Royal Festival Hall in London and as part of the UCLA Live Festival in Los Angeles.

In December 2015 the Los Angeles Film Critics Association awarded Burwell for best music score for Anomalisa and Carol.

Personal life

Burwell married Christine Sciulli in 1999.

Filmography

Films

Year	Title	Director	Notes
1984	Blood Simple	Joel Coen	N/A
1985	A Hero of Our Time	Michael Almereyda	Short film
1985	R.A.B.L.	Patrice M. Regnier	Short film
1986	Psycho III	Anthony Perkins	N/A
1987	Raising Arizona	Joel Coen Ethan Coen (Uncredited)	N/A
1988	Pass the Ammo	David Beaird	N/A
1988	The Beat	Paul Mones	N/A
1988	It Takes Two	David Beaird	N/A
1989	Checking Out	David Leland	N/A
1990	Miller's Crossing	Joel Coen	N/A
1991	Barton Fink	Joel Coen Ethan Coen (Uncredited)	N/A
1991	Doc Hollywood	Michael Caton-Jones	N/A
1991	Scorchers	David Beaird	N/A
1992	Buffy the Vampire Slayer	Fran Rubel Kuzui	N/A
1992	Waterland	Stephen Gyllenhaal	N/A
1992	Storyville	Mark Frost	N/A
1993	This Boy's Life	Michael Caton-Jones	N/A
1993	Kalifornia	Dominic Sena	N/A
1993	A Dangerous Woman	Stephen Gyllenhaal	N/A
1993	Wayne's World 2	Stephen Surjik	N/A
1994	The Hudsucker Proxy	Joel Coen	N/A
1994	It Could Happen to You	Andrew Bergman	N/A
1994	Airheads	Michael Lehmann	N/A
1995	Bad Company	Damian Harris	N/A
1995	A Goofy Movie	Kevin Lima	Composed with Don Davis
1995	Rob Roy	Michael Caton-Jones	N/A
1995	The Celluloid Closet	Rob Epstein Jeffrey Friedman	Documentary
1995	Two Bits	James Foley	N/A
1996	Fargo	Joel Coen Ethan Coen (Uncredited)	N/A
1996	Fear	James Foley	N/A
1996	Joe's Apartment	John Payson	N/A
1996	The Chamber	James Foley	N/A
1997	Picture Perfect	Glenn Gordon Caron	N/A
1997	Assassin(s)	Mathieu Kassovitz	French film
1997	Conspiracy Theory	Richard Donner	N/A
1997	The Locusts	John Patrick Kelley	N/A
1997	The Spanish Prisoner	David Mamet	N/A
1997	Girls Night Out	Myra Paci	Short film
1997	The Jackal	Michael Caton-Jones	N/A
1998	Gods and Monsters	Bill Condon	N/A
1998	The Big Lebowski	Joel Coen Ethan Coen (Uncredited)	N/A
1998	Velvet Goldmine	Todd Haynes	N/A
1998	The Hi-Lo Country	Stephen Frears	N/A
1999	The Corruptor	James Foley	N/A
1999	The General's Daughter	Simon West	N/A
1999	Being John Malkovich	Spike Jonze	N/A
1999	Three Kings	David O. Russell	N/A
1999	Mystery, Alaska	Jay Roach	N/A
2000	Hamlet	Michael Almereyda	N/A
2000	What Planet Are You From?	Mike Nichols	N/A
2000	Before Night Falls	Julian Schnabel	N/A
2000	Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2	Joe Berlinger	N/A
2001	A Knight's Tale	Brian Helgeland	N/A
2001	The Man Who Wasn't There	Joel Coen Ethan Coen (Uncredited)	N/A
2002	The Rookie	John Lee Hancock	N/A
2002	Searching for Paradise	Myra Paci	N/A
2002	S1m0ne	Andrew Niccol	N/A
2002	Adaptation.	Spike Jonze	N/A
2003	Intolerable Cruelty	Joel Coen Ethan Coen (Uncredited)	N/A
2004	The Ladykillers	Joel Coen Ethan Coen	N/A
2004	The Alamo	John Lee Hancock	N/A
2004	Kinsey	Bill Condon	N/A
2006	Fur	Steven Shainberg	N/A
2006	The Hoax	Lasse Hallström	N/A
2007	No Country for Old Men	Joel Coen Ethan Coen	N/A
2007	Before the Devil Knows You're Dead	Sidney Lumet	N/A
2008	In Bruges	Martin McDonagh	N/A
2008	Burn After Reading	Joel Coen Ethan Coen	N/A
2008	Twilight	Catherine Hardwicke	N/A
2009	A Serious Man	Joel Coen Ethan Coen	N/A
2009	Where the Wild Things Are	Spike Jonze	N/A
2009	The Blind Side	John Lee Hancock	N/A
2010	Howl	Rob Epstein Jeffrey Friedman	N/A
2010	The Kids Are All Right	Lisa Cholodenko	Composed with Nathan Larson and Craig Wedren
2010	True Grit	Joel & Ethan Coen	N/A
2011	Midnight Run	Neil Shelley	Short film
2011	The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1	Bill Condon	N/A
2011	Moving Gracefully Towards the Exit	Jean-Bernard Andro Patrice M. Regnier	N/A
2012	Seven Psychopaths	Martin McDonagh	N/A
2012	The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2	Bill Condon	N/A
2013	The Fifth Estate	Bill Condon	N/A
2015	Mr. Holmes	Bill Condon	Sixth film with director Bill Condon.
2015	Carol	Todd Haynes	N/A
2015	The Family Fang	Jason Bateman	N/A
2015	Legend	Brian Helgeland	N/A
2015	Anomalisa	Charlie Kaufman Duke Johnson	N/A
2016	The Finest Hours	Craig Gillespie	Composed with Marco Beltrami
2016	Hail, Caesar!	Joel Coen & Ethan Coen	N/A
2016	The Founder	John Lee Hancock	N/A

Television

Year	Title	Studio(s)	Notes
1990	Clash!	N/A	Theme music only
1993	And the Band Played On	Roger Spottiswoode	Television film
2011	Mildred Pierce	HBO	Miniseries
2011	Enlightened	HBO	Episode: "Pilot"
2014	Olive Kitteridge	HBO	Miniseries

External links

• Carter Burwell's official website
• Carter Burwell at the Internet Movie Database
• Thick Pigeon bio at LTM