Biography
Lee Holdridge was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. His mother was Puerto Rican and his father American. He spent his early years in Costa Rica, beginning music studies on the violin at the age of ten with Hugo Mariani, then the conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica. At fifteen – now determined to be a composer – he moved to Boston to finish high school and study composition with Henry Lasker.
Later, Holdridge moved to New York to continue his music studies and begin his professional career as a composer. While in New York, he wrote chamber works, rock pieces, songs, theater music and background scores for short films. Holdridge’s successes in New York came to the attention of Neil Diamond who brought Holdridge to Los Angeles to write arrangements for Diamond’s forthcoming albums. This led to Diamond and Holdridge collaborating on the film score for Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Holdridge has also arranged and conducted for artists such as Placido Domingo, John Denver, Barbra Streisand, Natalie Cole, Whitney Houston and many others.
Holdridge has scored numerous film and T.V. hits including Splash, Big Business, Mr. Mom, Micki & Maude, 16 Days Of Glory, The Other Side Of The Mountain Pt. II, Mustang Country, The Beastmaster, Jeremy (Cannes Film Festival award winner), Sylvester, Puerto Vallarta Squeeze and El Pueblo Del Sol. T.V. shows include Moonlighting and the Emmy and Grammy nominated theme song with Al Jarreau , the Emmy winning CBS series Beauty and the Beast, the theme song for Eight is Enough, the complete eight hour remake of East of Eden, The Tenth Man, Dreamer of Oz, One Against the Wind and the HBO Film The Tuskegee Airmen. Mr. Holdridge also scored the epic film Old Gringo and the intimate Pastime, winner of the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and Best Director Award at the Houston Film Festival. Holdridge also scored the Oscar winning Warner Bros. documentary feature Into The Arms of Strangers: Stories of The Kindertransport, the mini-series The Mists of Avalon, the mini-series 10.5, the PBS Emmy nominated series American Family, the pilot film for When Calls The Heart, and the documentary features Brothers at War and Brothers After War.
Holdridge began a very successful collaboration with director Richard Trank and Moriah Films, the film division of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, with the Academy Award winning documentary feature film The Long Way Home. Other films include Unlikely Heroes, the Hollywood Film Festival Documentary award winner Beautiful Music, the feature length biography of Simon Wiesenthal entitled I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life and Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal, which had its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in 2007. Recent projects are Winston Churchill: Walking With Destiny, The Prime Ministers and Never Stop Dreaming.
Holdridge has an extensive repertoire of concert works including the Ballet Fantasy for Strings and Harp, Concerto # 2 For Violin And Orchestra, a suite from the opera Lazarus And His Beloved, the orchestral suite Scenes Of Summer, the Concerto For Viola And Chamber Orchestra, the Concertino For Violoncello And Strings, the Serenade For Oboe And Strings, the Fantasy Sonata For Violoncello and Piano, the Elegy For Harp and Strings, the choral work Hymns Triumphant Parts 1 and 2, the Concertino for Guitar and Orchestra, Ode to Orion and Fantasy Chorale for Orchestra and Chorus.
Mr. Holdridge’s extensive background includes co-authorship of the Joffrey Ballet standard Trinity, the Los Angeles Opera one act in-school operas The Prospector, The Magic Dream and Journey to Cordoba. Commissioned by The Los Angeles Music Center Opera, Journey to Cordoba premiered on February 11, 1995, at the Luckman Theater at California State University, Los Angeles and has since enjoyed over 100 performances in the Southern California region. Both one act operas Tanis in America and Concierto Para Mendez were also premiered by the Los Angeles Opera.
The first full length opera Dulce Rosa, based on an Isabel Allende short story with a libretto by Richard Sparks, was premiered by The Los Angeles Opera in 2013 with Placido Domingo conducting. More recently it received the South American premiere in Montevideo, Uruguay, performed in Spanish with a libretto by Placido Domingo Jr.
