Haim Frank Ilfman

From the moment an eight-year-old Frank Ilfman was given Ennio Morricone's soundtrack to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the seed was sown - the ambitious, budding musician had his heart set on a career in film music. With an unwavering desire to achieve his goal, Ilfman has successfully dedicated himself to performing and understanding music. He studied trombone and piano at the Jaffa Conservatorium of Music in Tel Aviv and as a young teenager was playing lead trombone with the Tel Aviv Dixieland Band. However, the tenacious young composer became frustrated and bored with the structured methods of the Conservatorium and was eventually asked to leave for playing truant - Ilfman wanted to be more imaginative with how he created music, so went it alone. In 1984, during a visit to Berlin, Ilfman got introduced to German composer Klaus Doldinger, who happened to be scoring The Neverending Story at that time. A visit to the film's recording sessions made Ilfman fall deeper in love with the art of film music and commit fully to his ambition. He worked on his first television production, when he was just 17 years old, with composer Jan Hammer on the acclaimed television series The Chancer, starring Clive Owen, and since then has scored more than forty films and numerous television shows. Among his many talents is his ability to diagnose how music can best contribute to a film; from brooding melancholy to playful joviality, his work covers a wide spectrum of genres and has gained him much respect in the field. Frank Ifman's recent scores include the award-winning films Big Bad Wolves and Cupcakes, with scores performed by The London Metropolitan Orchestra at the legendary Air Studios. He has also scored: May I Kill U?, a dark comedy, directed by BAFTA award winner Stuart Urban and starring Kevin Bishop; Mercenaries, directed by Paris Leonti, starring Robert Fucilla and Billy Zane; the three-part documentaries The Iraq War and Putin, Russia and the West for BBC and the internationally acclaimed heartbreaking film Bitter Seeds, directed by Micha Peled. Forthcoming films include Apples and Oranges for director Richard Scobie and the romantic comedy Emotional Rescue, starring Heather Graham and Timothy Hutton.