Joel Goldsmith 1957-2012

It's with regret that I must announce the passing of  Joel Goldsmith, TV, Film and Video Game music composer and eldest son of the legendary Jerry Goldsmith. Goldsmith [54] died of cancer on Sunday, at his home in Hidden Hills, California.

Goldsmith's early work was deep into the electronic range of the late 70's early 80's and he earned his mark as an arranger for composer Richard Band before scoring The Man With Two Brains in '83. His father had him produce Jerry's first electronic score Runaway in '84. Their collaboration included some 20 minutes of additional music for Jerry's sublime score to Star Trek: First Contact in 1996. Among the other movies which benefit from his work are Moon 44 from 1990 which was his first symphonic score and Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence ['93] but Kull the Conqurer ['97] with a big, bold symphonic score is probably his best known movie work.

He was one of the first well known movie and TV composers to make the jump to video games when they began to cease using 16-bit audio when he scored the TCN News reports for the cutscenes for Tom Clancy's SSN for Simon and Schuster Interactive. He later scored Call of Duty 3 in 2006.

Later in his career Joel turned to TV scoring having dabbled with The Untouchables series from 1993 and The Outer Limits in 1997. He found his niche and international fame when he supplemented David Arnold's Stargate theme for the Stargate: SG-1 TV series pilot in 1997 and was kept on for 10 seasons scoring 217 episodes between 1997 and 2007. He also composed the theme and episodic music for both Stargate: Atlantis, Stargate: Universe and the Stargate: SG-1 DTV movies.

Joel Goldsmith sadly needed more time to leave the mark his father did on music as a whole but his life was tragically cut short before he could get there. If any of you heard his deeply emotional and atmospheric music from Stargate: Universe you will know he was at a turning point in his creativity and was on the road to true brilliance. Nonetheless he can rest rest in peace knowing that his contributions, especially to science fiction fans will live on. We don't forget people easily.