After spending three years on the road with Dizzy Gillespie, Argentine-born pianist Lalo Schifrin decided to settle down. Hollywood might seem an odd choice, but Schifrin applied his head for arrangements to the sonic dimension of films. He scored over 70 movies, including Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, Bullitt and Cool Hand Luke along with TV shows such as "Mission: Impossible" and "Starsky & Hutch."
He peaked during the age when jazz edged out classical music as the primary source for movie scoresbefore being edged out in turn by rock and hip-hop. Schifrin was among the greatest of the Hollywood jazzmen for his sense of the dramatic and the ways sound can play off vision.
The Grammy winner is still composing and arranging, less for film and TV than for the concert hall. His new CD, Invocations: Jazz Meets the Symphony No. 7 (released by Aleph Records), finds Schifrin conducting the Czech National Orchestra, many of whose members step out to solo, jazz style. The set includes a nod to his long-ago mentor Gillespie ("Groovin' High") and the inspiration he received from Debussy ("Reverie") along with originals suggesting he still has the itch to do a movie.
