WSAcademy: WSA Honorary Member
Known as one of the most original French film composers, Philippe Sarde’s career embraces 50 years of collaboration on the best movies and with great directors. Son of an opera singer and nephew of the composer George Auric, his career began with les Choses de la Vie (Claude Sautet, 1970) at the age of 16. The immediate success of the music and the recording of the Chanson d’Hélène by Romy Schneider made him immediately famous for his very first movie.
This marked the start of Philippe Sarde’s legendary career, writing scores for the best directors that went on to become milestones in film music. His exigency and the originality of his writing, mixing unforgettable melodies with unusual orchestrations, made him the regular composer of Claude Sautet, Marco Ferreri, Bertrand Tavernier, Roman Polanski, Georges Lautner, André Téchiné, Costa-Gavras and many others.
Phillipe Sarde received an Oscar nomination for Tess (Roman Polanski, 1979), as well as being nominated 10 times for the Best Music César, winning the prize for Barocco (André Téchiné, 1976).
Philippe Sarde’s music has been recorded by the best musicians of his generation: Chet Baker for Flic ou Voyou (Georges Lautner, 1979), Stan Getz for Mort d’un Pourri (Georges Lautner, 1977), Stéphane Grapelli for Beau-Père (Bertrand Blier, 1981), Alexandre Lagoya for Every Time we say Goodbye (Moshé Mizrahi, 1986) or Ron Carter and Buster Williams for le Choix des Armes (Alain Corneau, 1981)...
The London Symphony Orchestra and Orchestre de Paris have been his symphonic partners for scores like la Guerre du Feu (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1981), Lord of the Flies (Harry Cook, 1990), Coup de Torchon (Bertrand Tavernier, 1981), l’Ours (Jean- Jacques Annaud, 1988) or Nelly et Monsieur Arnaud (Claude Sautet, 1995).
Defined by Bertrand Tavernier as “musical screenwriter”, Philippe Sarde is famous to create feeling with his music that goes beyond the images on screen.
His works are now starting a new career in concert halls (Ubeda film music festival in 2011, Krakow film music festival in 2016 and in March 2018, the first film music festival “Ciné-Notes” in Opéra national de Bordeaux entirely dedicated to his works).

WSAwards

Lifetime Achievement Award 2018