Alan Silvestri

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Silvestri's career began in an unusual way. In 1972, while working intermittently as a session guitarist, the producer of the low-budget action film The Doberman Gang asked him to score the picture. Despite a lack of experience, Silvestri agreed: 'I went out and bought a how-to-compose book by Earl Hagen.... At one point, I was using beer cans for percussion.' From 1978 to 1983, he was the main composer for the television series CHiPs, writing music for 95 of the show's 139 episodes. His big break came when he met film director Robert Zemeckis while working on Romancing the Stone (1984). Since then, he has composed the music for all of Zemeckis's movies, including the Back to the Future trilogy (1985–1990), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Death Becomes Her (1992), Forrest Gump (1994), Contact (1997), Cast Away (2000), The Polar Express (2004), Beowulf (2007), A Christmas Carol (2009), Flight (2012), and The Walk (2015).

In Their Own Story

Silvestri moved to Los Angeles in 1970. 'I came to Hollywood in 1970 broke.... I didn't even have any goals or plans. I didn't even go to movies. And I knew nothing about composers or composing,' he said. In 1989, he composed the score for the James Cameron-directed film The Abyss. Since 2001, he has also collaborated regularly with director Stephen Sommers, scoring the films The Mummy Returns (2001), Van Helsing (2004), and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009). He has composed the scores for four Marvel Cinematic Universe films: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), The Avengers (2012), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), and Avengers: Endgame (2019) and is currently scheduled to compose the scores for Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. His themes and motifs from those films have been referenced and reprised by other composers in multiple other MCU films.

Reader's Guide

Silvestri has received two Academy Award nominations: Best Original Score for Forrest Gump (1994); and Best Original Song for 'Believe' on The Polar Express soundtrack. He also received two Golden Globe nominations: Best Score for Forrest Gump and Best Song for The Polar Express. He has won two Emmys, both for Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey – Outstanding Main Title Theme Music and Outstanding Music Composition for a Series for the episode 'Standing Up in the Milky Way'. He has won the Saturn Award for Best Music three times, for his scores for Predator (1987), Back to the Future Part III (1989/90), and Van Helsing (2004). On September 23, 2011, he received the Max Steiner Film Music Achievement Award from the City of Vienna at the yearly film-music gala concert Hollywood in Vienna. He received an honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music in 1995.

Did You Know?

• Silvestri used beer cans for percussion when scoring his first film, The Doberman Gang (1972).
• He was a drummer for a short time in 1966 with Teaneck-based rock band the Wildcats.
• He is a licensed pilot and flies his own aircraft - a King Air 65-C90A.
• Silvestri and his wife Sandra own a vineyard, Silvestri Vineyards, in Carmel Valley, California.
• He attended Berklee College of Music for two years and later received an honorary Doctorate of Music from the school in 1995.