Legendary lyricist Alan Bergman died on Thursday (July 17) at his dwelling in Los Angeles on the age of 99, it was introduced Friday by household spokesman Ken Sunshine. His daughter Julie Bergman was current.
Bergman suffered from respiratory points in current months, however continued to write down songs until the very finish.
Bergman and his spouse, Marilyn Bergman (who died in 2022 at age 93), are in all probability greatest recognized for writing beautiful ballads comparable to “What Are You Doing the Remainder of Your Life,” “Items of Goals” and “How Do You Preserve the Music Taking part in?,” however they refused to be typecast. In addition they wrote the witty theme songs for such TV collection as Maude, Good Occasions and Alice.
The Bergmans gained three Academy Awards, together with greatest authentic music for “The Windmills of Your Thoughts” from The Thomas Crown Affair and “The Means We Had been” from the film of the identical title and three Grammy Awards, together with music of the yr for “The Means We Had been.”
The Bergmans acquired 15 Oscar nominations for greatest authentic music, a complete equaled or bettered by solely 4 songwriters in historical past – Sammy Cahn (26), Johnny Mercer (18), Diane Warren (16) and Paul Francis Webster (16). The Bergmans collaborated on their Oscar-nominated songs with seven completely different composers – Michel Legrand, Henry Mancini, Maurice Jarre, Marvin Hamlisch, David Shire, John Williams and Dave Grusin.
In 1983 they grew to become the primary (and nonetheless solely) songwriters to be nominated for 3 Oscars for greatest authentic music in a single yr for “How Do You Preserve the Music Taking part in” from Greatest Associates, “It May Be You” from Tootsie and “If We Had been in Love” from Sure, Giorgio.
In addition they gained 4 Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards.
The Bergmans have been inducted into the Songwriters Corridor of Fame in 1980 and acquired that group’s highest honor, the Johnny Mercer Award, in 1997. They acquired a trustees award from the Recording Academy in 2013.
The Bergmans additionally acquired lifetime achievement awards from the Nationwide Academy of Songwriters and the Nationwide Music Publishers Affiliation. They acquired honorary doctorates from Berklee Faculty of Music and the College of Massachusetts. Alan Bergman’s alma mater, the College of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, acknowledged him with its Distinguished Alumnus Award.
Within the years since his spouse’s demise, Alan Bergman continued to write down, document and carry out. His closing collaboration was with guitarist and composer Pat Metheny, who is ready to document an album of 9 Bergman/Metheny songs later this yr.
Bergman died simply eight days after the announcement of a celebration in his honor on what would have been his a hundredth birthday on Sept. 11. A lot of his buddies and admirers have been set to carry out at a live performance in his honor that evening at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica, Calif.
The roster consists of Patti Austin, Shelly Berg, Aloe Blacc, Jackson Browne, Peter Erskine, Michael Feinstein, David Finck, Mitch Forman, Jason Gould, Dave Grusin, Tamir Hendelman, Trey Henry, Roger Kellaway, Seth MacFarlane, Serge Merlaud, Greg Phillinganes, Paul Reiser, Lee Ritenour, Sheléa, Tierney Sutton and Lillias White.
As well as, there have been to have been video appearances by Invoice Charlap, Natalie Dessay, Pat Metheny, Neima Naouri and Barbra Streisand, who paid tribute to Bergman and Marilyn on her Grammy-nominated 2011 album What Issues Most – Barbra Streisand Sings the Lyrics of Alan & Marilyn Bergman.
The occasion would have served as a profit for the Jazz Bakery, of which Bergman is a founding member of the board. The non-profit listening room has been referred to as “probably the most prestigious jazz house in Los Angeles.”
Two of the artists who have been on the invoice for the birthday occasion shared feedback in an announcement.
5-time Grammy nominee Michael Feinstein stated, “The songs Alan and Marilyn have written are a part of a pantheon of tolerating music that may stay lengthy past Alan’s Centenary, for they’re timeless expressions of the human situation, and can by no means develop previous. The love that they basically lived, expressed and demonstrated in life, imbues their work with a particular eloquence and fact. It’s an honor to have a good time Alan on his a hundredth!”
Actor, comic and author Paul Reiser commented, “My aim in life is to attempt to be even a small fraction of the person — and artist — that my expensive pal Alan Bergman is. (I might have greater than 100 years to get there, however … engaged on it.)”
As well as, Ruth Value, founding father of the Jazz Bakery, stated, “100 years on this planet isn’t any small achievement, however to have graced these years with such love, magnificence and artwork speaks to a life terribly effectively lived. Alan is incomparable, and I like him for all types of causes.”
Survivors embody his daughter Julie Bergman, a author and movie producer, and granddaughter Emily Sender, who simply accomplished her masters in international meals research. There shall be a non-public graveside burial.