Warren M. Sherk is the author of Film and Television Music: A Guide to Books, Articles, and Composer Interviews (Scarecrow Press, 2011). His writings on film music have appeared in the second edition of the Grove Dictionary of American Music (Oxford Univ. Press and Grove Music Online), Wagner & Cinema (Indiana Univ. Press, 2010), and Film Music 2: History, Theory, Practice. In addition, he coedited the Dimitri Tiomkin Anthology, the largest collection of the composer’s film songs ever assembled (Hal Leonard, 2009), and was an assistant editor for the Elmer Bernstein Collection songbook (Hal Leonard, 2011).
Sherk holds a bachelor’s degree in music composition from the University of Arizona, where he studied with Robert Muczynski, and a master’s from UCLA, where he studied with Roger Bourland and Paul Reale. During the 1990s and 2000s, he worked in music preparation for motion pictures, providing orchestrations for such films as Dragonheart: A New Beginning, 101 Dalmatians II: Patch’s London Adventure, and Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer. His orchestral reconstructions of classic film music can be heard on recordings issued by Koch, Naxos, Silva Screen, Tadlow Music, and Varese Sarabande.
He served as secretary of the Film Music Society for many years, contributing to its journals The Cue Sheet and Music and the Moving Image, and coordinating the publication of the society’s Film Music 2 and Elmer Bernstein’s Film Music Notebook. He currently serves on the board of the Film Music Foundation. Sherk is Associate Director of Special Collections and Photograph Archive at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills, California.
Last updated, July 2022
Patrick Russ is a symphonic orchestrator of more than 170 film scores. He was principal orchestrator for many years for composers Elmer Bernstein and Maurice Jarre, and currently collaborates with other orchestrators on scores by Cliff Eidelman, Richard Gibbs, James Newton Howard, Rachel Portman, and others. He has created frequently performed concert suites for films with music by Elmer Bernstein, John Debney, Danny Elfman, Jerry Goldsmith, Bronislau Kaper, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Maurice Jarre, Nino Rota, Miklos Rozsa, Dimitri Tiomkin, Franz Waxman, and Victor Young. He has also created symphonic adaptations of entire film scores including Bride of Frankenstein and Casablanca, performed live in concert with the film.
His symphonic arrangements have been premiered by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Chicago Symphony, Cincinnati Pops, Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Royal Liverpool, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Vienna Philharmonic, and numerous others. He arranged the “Olympic Hymn,” sill in use today, and music for the Opening Ceremonies in Atlanta, Salt Lake City, and London. Other arrangements include the Grammy Award-winning CD Previn Conducts Korngold and William Walton’s critically acclaimed Five Bagatelles for Guitar and Orchestra.
He has created music arrangements for the U.S. President at the White House, members of the Royal Family at Hampton Court, Pope John Paul II, and the King of Sweden; and for premieres and recordings by opera greats Renée Fleming, Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Placido Domingo, and Jubilant Sykes, as well as instrumental soloists Matt Haimovitz and The 5 Browns. He is arranger or producer of several CDs for American classical guitarist Christopher Parkening, and judges for the “Young Guitarist Competition” at the Parkening International Guitar Competition in Malibu, California. He serves as President of the Film Music Foundation. Patrick, his wife Shirley and their children reside in Los Angeles.