Hummie Mann:  

Hummie Mann biography Two-time Emmy-award winning composer/arranger Hummie Mann has collaborated with some of Hollywood's most celebrated directors in both theatrical and television films. His motion pictures projects have ranged from Mel Brooks' ¿Robin Hood: Men in Tights¿ to Peter Yates' ¿Year of the Comet¿, the children¿s film ¿Thomas and the Magic Railroad¿ to ¿Wooly Boys¿ directed by Leszek Burzynski starring Peter Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, Keith Carradine and Joe Mazzello. For television, he has scored projects for Simon Wincer (the miniseries ¿P.T. Barnum¿), Jonathan Kaplan (the miniseries re-make of ¿In Cold Blood¿), Norman Jewison (¿Picture Windows¿), Peter Bogdanovich (¿The Rescuers: Tales of Courage - Two Women¿), Joe Dante (¿Masters of Horror: Homecoming¿), Jim Abrahams (¿First Do No Harm¿), Richard Friedenberg (¿Suzanne¿s Diary for Nicholas¿), William Friedkin, John Milius and Ralph Bakshi (all part of the ¿Rebel Highway¿ series), among others. Mann was honored with his second Emmy Award for an episode of Showtime's Picture Windows entitled ¿Language of the Heart¿, a love story about a street musician and an aspiring ballerina. The composer's score so impressed director Jonathan Kaplan that Kaplan hired him to write the music for CBS¿s ¿In Cold Blood¿ starring Anthony Edwards and Eric Roberts. The four-hour miniseries, based on the Truman Capote classic about two young drifters and the murder of a Midwestern family, demanded an unorthodox musical approach. Mann took the lyrics actually written by one of the killers (an amateur songwriter) and set them to music; the songs thus became the heart of the score, which was played by a handful of instruments including mandolin, dobro and bottleneck blues guitar supported by electronic textures. Kaplan says that Oscar-winning movie-music legend Jerry Goldsmith recommended Mann as a composer with a strong sense of melody and a genuine command of the orchestra. Adds Kaplan: "It's very rare that you can find someone who is as gifted as Hummie is, and as motivated and easy to work with." In the world of Independent films, Mann scored ¿Falltime¿ for first time director Paul Warner starring Mickey Rourke, Stephen Baldwin and Sheryl Lee. That film premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival. Mann has also scored films by two well-known screenwriters making their initial forays into directing. He composed a contemporary jazz-rock score for the coming-of-age story ¿Sticks & Stones¿ by Neil Tolkin, and also scored the short film ¿The Red Coat¿ for Little Women writer Robin Swicord. Twice Mann has collaborated with legendary comedy director Mel Brooks. His first Brooks score was for ¿Robin Hood: Men in Tights¿, which NBC-TV critic Gene Shalit singled out for praise, likening it to the legendary Erich Wolfgang Korngold's scores for the classic swashbucklers of the '30s and '40s. He also scored Brooks' next film- ¿Dracula: Dead & Loving It¿ which starred Leslie Nielsen. The grand-scale symphonic music for Brooks' two film parodies contrasts sharply with Mann's acoustic-guitar-based score for the Donald Sutherland-Amy Irving thriller ¿Benefit of the Doubt¿, and the soaring, charming music for Peter Yates' ¿Year of the Comet¿, which combined orchestral sounds with Scottish ethnic elements. Yates, the director of Bullitt and The Deep, found "a freshness and energy" in Mann's music for ¿Year of the ...Expand for more