Charles Bernstein(I)
- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Talented, prolific and versatile film composer Charles Bernstein was
born on February 28, 1943 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He conducted his
own orchestral music at age sixteen and studied composition with
Vitorio Giannini and Vincent Persichetti at Juilliard. Bernstein also
attended the University of California; he received an Outstanding
Graduate of the College Award, a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship and
a Chancellor's Doctoral Teaching Fellowship while working with American
composer Roy Harris. His impressively eclectic musical style ranges
from comedy to drama to action to horror. Bernstein has supplied the
scores for a bunch of enjoyably down'n'dirty 70's drive-in exploitation
features: he turned up the funk with "That Man Bolt," went all-out
groovy for the "Invasion of the Bee Girls," and kicked out the tuneful
swinging country jams on "White Lightning" (a snippet of this score was
used in the "Kill Bill Vol. 1" soundtrack), "Gator," "A Small Town in
Texas," and "Nightmare in Badham County." Bernstein's scores in the
horror genre are especially chilling and effective: Among his finest
fright film scores are "Hex," "Sweet Kill," "The Entity" (this is one
of Bernstein's most inspired, inventive and underrated scores; it was
nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Music), "Cujo," Wes Craven's
terrifying classic "A Nightmare on Elm Street," and "April Fool's Day."
Moreover, Bernstein has done scores for a large number of made-for-TV
movies. He won an Emmy Award for his score for the "Little Miss
Perfect" episode of the "CBS Schoolbreak Special." His scores for
"Enslavement" and "The Sea Wolf" were nominated for Emmy Awards while
his score for "The Man Who Broke A 1,000 Chains" received a Cable ACE
Award nomination for Original Score. Outside of his substantial film
and television work, Bernstein has also done music for Off-Broadway
theater, modern dance, and the World Festival of Sacred Music, played
jazz in the cellars of Paris, and danced and played folk music with the
Greeks and gypsies from the Balkans. Moreover, Bernstein has written
the acclaimed books "Film Music and Everything Else - Volume 1:
Limitations" and "Movie Music: An Insider's View." He won an ASCAP
Deems Taylor Award for his writing on music. Bernstein is a member of
the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences, the Board of Directors of the Society of Composers and
Lyricists, and the Board of Directors of the ASCAP Foundation. In
addition, Charles Bernstein has taught on the graduate film scoring
faculty at USC and holds an annual film scoring seminar in the summer
at UCLA Extension.