Composer Maurice Jarre conducted a suite from his Oscar-winning score for Doctor Zhivago at a 1992 tribute to the film’s director David Lean.
Composer and conductor Maurice Jarre died of cancer in Los Angeles on Sunday. He was 84. Born in Lyon, he abandoned his engineering studies at the Sorbonne to pursue a career in music. He lived in the U.S. since the 1960s.
His passing was noted around the world; he was remembered in the Los Angeles Times and on NPR.
He worked for some five decades and wrote the scores for many of the most memorable and beloved films of the ’60s and ’70s, including David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago (for both of which he won Academy Awards for Best Score) and Ryan’s Daughter. He won a third Oscar for his score of A Passage to India.
Among his other film scores are Sundays and Cybele, Isadora, Topaz, The Life and times of Judge Roy Bean, The Last Tycoon, Mohammad Messenger of God, The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, The Mosquito Coast, No Way out, Dead Poets Society, Jacob’s Ladder, Ghost, A Walk in the Clouds, and I Dreamed of Africa. His TV scores included Franco Zefferelli’s Jesus of Nazareth and Shogun.
At the David Lean tribute —which is available on DVD— Maurice Jarre conducted a suite from his score for Lawrence of Arabia.
Many of Maurice Jarre’s film scores are available on CD (as on Amazon).