Roy Budd

 

[1947 - 1993] Britsh pianist and composer with one of the most interesting works combining jazz and pop on the early 70s. Budd studied piano very early and set up a jazz trio in adolescence.

Started in cinema with a questionable maneuver: knowing that director Ralph Nelson was looking for a composer for the movie Soldier Blue, Budd re-recorded compositions of other artists such as Jerry Goldsmith, Max Steiner and Dimitri Tiomkin, and presented as material of his own! Debuted, with original own material, in the violent and controversial western Soldier Blue (1970). With a line of work deeply rooted in jazz language, Budd was, alongside other jazz musicians Lalo Schifrin as David Shire and Jerry Fielding, one of the most important composers in popular cinema of the period. The list of films Budd writed for is remarkable, Get Carter (1971), Fear Is The Key (1972), Stone Killer (1973), The Black Windmill (1974), Paper Tiger (1975), Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1978) and Wild Geese (1978) among others. His most ambitious project was the composition of a new soundtrack for the revival of Phantom of the Opera (1925), project completed shortly before his premature death.