Alan Silvestri

• Grew up in New Jersey.
• Attended the Berklee College of Music.
• Composed music for film and television by his early 20s.
• Successful collaborations with director Robert Zemeckis including Forrest Gump(1994), Cast Away(2000) and The Polar Express(2004).
• Back To The Future (1985)
  • Film is a comedy but the music treats it as a serious story.
  • Shows parallels between work of Silvestri and Williams.
  • Rhythmic/modernist when characters are in peril.
  • Return to tonaliy, restatement of main theme when things turn positive.
  • Music closely follows both drama and action, with rapid changes between tonality and atonality.