Marvin Hamlisch (1944-2012)

Composer and conductor Marvin Hamlisch has passed away at the age of 68.

One of only eleven people to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award, Hamlisch was long considered one of the top composers for film and stage.

Hamlisch was born in New York City and by the age of five was able to play the music he heard on the radio, on the piano. By six he was accepted into what is now the Juilliard School Pre-College Division.

As a film composer Hamlisch wrote the score for classics including "The Way We Were" (for which he won two Oscars) and "Sophie's Choice", as well as adapting the music of Scott Joplin for "The Sting".

Hamlisch's work for the stage included composing the score for "A Chorus Line" which won him (and the others involved in the production) the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1975.

As a conductor Hamlisch served as Musical Director and arranger for Barbra Streisand's 1994 U.S./U.K. tour and the television special, "Barbra Streisand: The Concert", for which he received two Emmys. Hamlisch also served as Principal Pops conductor for a number of symphony orchestras including the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the San Diego Symphony and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

Recently, Hamlisch had been working on a musical adaptation of Jerry Lewis's "The Nutty Professor", a new Broadway musical called "Gotta Dance" and had written the score for an upcoming HBO project about the life of Liberace.