Academy Award-nominated American film composer Alan Silvestri is perhaps best known for his early

work with director Robert Zemeckis. They followed their first collaboration, 1984's Romancing the
Stone, with many more blockbuster classics, including Forrest Gump (1994) and The Polar Express
(2004). The latter earned Silvestri an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song for "Believe." His other
high-profile works include multiple entries in Marvel's The Avengers franchise, including Captain
America: The First Avenger (2011) and Avengers: Infinity War (2018).
Silvestri took to multiple instruments while growing up in Teaneck, New Jersey, and was already
considering a career in music by the age of 15. He attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston for
guitar, but after two years, the head of the department learned of an opening playing with Wayne
Cochran & the C.C. Riders and recommended Silvestri. Silvestri accepted the position but soon found
that life on the road wasn't for him. After an arranging job fell through, he ended up stranded in Los
Angeles. He got his first break into film while still in his early twenties, when he met Oscar-nominated
lyricist Bradford Craig. Through Craig, he got a job scoring the small film The Doberman Gang (1972).
That led to composing for other low-budget movies before he found steady work in 1977 scoring the
television series ChiPs. After the show was canceled, Silvestri's career hit a dry period that ended when
he teamed up with Zemeckis on a film that proved to be a big break for all involved: Romancing the
Stone (1984).

In the years to follow, Silvestri and Zemeckis worked together on many hit films, including Back to the
Future (1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), and Best Picture winner Forrest Gump (1994). In the
meantime, Silvestri's other scoring assignments included films such as Predator (1987), The Abyss
(1989), The Bodyguard (1992), and The Quick and the Dead (1995). The year 1995 also saw the release
of the audio compilation Voyages: The Film Music Journeys of Alan Silvestri, released by Varèse
Sarabande. He remained an in-demand screen composer, working on films such as Zemeckis' Cast Away
(2000) and Disney's Lilo & Stitch (2002) before earning an Oscar nomination and a Grammy win for the
song "Believe" from The Polar Express (2004), a song he co-wrote with Glen Ballard.
Beowulf [Music from the Motion Picture]
Silvestri reunited with Zemeckis for 2007's Beowulf, and he scored his first film for Marvel Studios,
Captain America: The First Avenger, in 2011. He returned for The Avengers the following year. Other
highlights of his 2010's career include Emmys for his work on the TV series Cosmos: A Spacetime
Odyssey (2014) and more Zemeckis collaborations: a biopic about high-wire artist Philippe Petite titled
The Walk (2015) and the Brad Pitt thriller Allied (2016). His scores for Robert Zemeckis' Welcome to
Marwen, Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One, and Marvel's Avengers: Infinity War saw release in 2018,
with the latter charting in the Top 100 on the Billboard 200.