Lee Holdridge

by Greg Prato
In addition to having either written, arranged, or conducted for numerous respected pop artists, Lee Holdridge has penned countless scores for both TV shows and motion pictures. Born in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti (but raised in Costa Rica), Holdridge began studying music at the age of ten by taking violin lessons with a conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica. By the time he was a teenager, Holdridge decided he wanted to become a composer, and relocated to Boston to study composition. A few years later, he moved once more, this time to New York City, where Holdridge penned chamber works, rock compositions, theater music, and background scores for films. His work gained the attention of Neil Diamond, who convinced Holdridge to move to Los Angeles and write for him, which resulted in numerous hit albums (including both Diamond and Holdridge collaborating together on the film score for Jonathan Livingston Seagull).
This led to scoring for film and TV, including such movies as Splash, Big Business, Mr. Mom, Micki & Maude, 16 Days of Glory, The Other Side of the Mountain, Pt. II, Mustang Country, The Beastmaster, Jeremy, the Cannes Festival-award-winning Sylvester, A Tigers' Tale, and El Pueblo del Sol; and the TV shows Moonlighting, Beauty and the Beast, the complete eight-hour remake of East of Eden, The Tenth Man, Dreamer of Oz, Hallmark Hall of Fame's One Against the Wind, and The Story Lady. This led to work with such pop artists as Barbra Streisand, Brian May of Queen, Stevie Wonder, John Denver, Al Jarreau, Dionne Warwick, Diana Ross, Natalie Cole, and opera tenor Placido Domingo. Over the years, Holdridge has issued several albums, including El Pueblo del Sol, the Grammy-award-winning Symphonic Hollywood, Film Music, and Into Thin Air: Death on Everest, among others.