Marvin Hamlisch

Since he first emerged in the mid-'70s, Marvin Hamlisch has been one of the top composers in film, theater, and popular music. As holder of numerous gold record awards for his soundtrack and cast recordings, and the composer of some of the most well-known songs ever cut by Barbra Streisand and Lesley Gore, among many others, he is among the few "stars" in the world of popular music, composition, and songwriting to achieve major public recognition since the emergence of rock music in the '60s. Born in New York in 1944, Marvin Hamlisch grew up on Manhattan's Upper West Side. His father was an accordionist and bandleader specializing in dance music and Hamlisch showed a fascination with music at an early age. At age 5, Hamlisch was mimicking the music he heard on the radio on the piano, and he began lessons a year later. At age 7, he auditioned for the Juilliard School of Music by transcribing the then-current hit "Goodnight Irene" into different keys spontaneously, on demand from the panel judging him. He was accepted, becoming the youngest student in Juilliard's history; he later graduated from Queens College in New York. In his teens, Hamlisch's performing talent seemed to beckon a career in the concert hall, but he proved psychologically unsuited to being a concert pianist, owing to terrible anxiety that proved difficult to overcome as a boy. He turned instead to composition, an activity that he had always pursued privately. While still at Juilliard, he worked as a music counselor at an upstate camp, where some of his songs were performed; one of the songs he originally wrote for a show at the camp, "Travelin' Man," was recorded by Liza Minnelli on her debut album. However, Hamlisch's first hit came when he was 21 years old, from Lesley Gore, in the form of...