Gabriel Yared

Gabriel Yared (born 7 October 1949) is a Lebanese-French composer, best known for his work in French and American cinema. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Yared scored the French films Betty Blue and Camille Claudel. He later worked on English-language films, particularly those directed by Anthony Minghe... More

Gabriel Yared (born 7 October 1949) is a Lebanese-French composer, best known for his work in French and American cinema. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Yared scored the French films Betty Blue and Camille Claudel. He later worked on English-language films, particularly those directed by Anthony Minghella. He won an Academy Award for Best Original Score and a Grammy Award for his work on The English Patient (1996) and was nominated for both The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and Cold Mountain (2003). When Yared was 7, his father sent him to an accordion teacher. Two years later Yared stopped his accordion lessons and started music theory and piano lessons. Although he was not necessarily a gifted pianist, Yared was interested in reading music. When Yared was 14, his piano teacher died and Yared replaced him as the organist of Université Saint-Joseph. Yared used the university's library to read the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, Robert Schumann, and many other composers. This extensive reading inspired his first original composition, a piano waltz. Yared gained a degree in law and did not formally study music at the university level until he traveled to France in 1969 to attend the École Normale de Musique de Paris as a non-registered student. There he learned the rules of music composition from Henri Dutilleux. At the end of 1971, Yared went to Brazil to visit his uncle and was asked by the president of the World Federation of Light Music Festivals to write a song to represent the Lebanese in the Rio de Janeiro Song Festival. The song he composed went on to win first prize. While in Brazil, he also performed with a small orchestra. Yared subsequently said that his time in Brazil greatly influenced his work. In 1975, he arranged the album Minacantalucio for the popular Italian singer Mina. He then went back to France, where he met and collaborated with the Costa Brothers, Jacques Dutronc, Françoise Hardy, Charles Aznavour, Mireille Mathieu, and numerous other musicians. This was a prolific period for the composer and he wrote nearly 3,000 pieces over a span of about six years. His contributions included a number of radio and TV jingles, such as TF1 news jingles and an episode on the series In the Tracks of. Yared is best known for his collaborations with the late Anthony Minghella. His first collaboration with Minghella was the 1996 film The English Patient, which was highly acclaimed and won him an Oscar for Best Original Score. He composed the scores for all of Minghella's subsequent films and the music for the television series The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, co-created by Minghella and Richard Curtis. Aside from his work with Minghella, Yared scored a number of other films, including Betty Blue (1986), Map of the Human Heart (1992), City of Angels (1998), Message in a Bottle (1999), Autumn in New York (2000), The Next Best Thing (2000), Possession (2002), and Bon Voyage (2003). He had a notable collaboration with René Laloux in the late 1980es on Gandahar and How Wang-fo was saved produced at the SEK Studio in North Korea. Cassandra Clare reported in August 2012 that Yared was tapped to compose the score for The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. However, he was eventually replaced on the project by Atli Örvarsson.