Mission Impossible: My Life in Music is the engaging autobiography of
Lalo Schifrin, the musician, conductor, and composer of more than 60
jazz and classical works and over 100 film and television scores,
including Bullitt, the Rush Hour series, Cool Hand Luke, The Dead Pool,
Tango, The Fox, Voyage of the Damned, The Amityville Horror, The Sting
II, and Mission Impossible. Edited by Richard Palmer, this autobiography
is a journey from Schifrin's formative years in Argentina to the
classical and jazz atmospheres in Paris in the 1950s; and from his jazz
career in the United States with Dizzy Gillespie from 1958-1963 to his
development as a film and television composer from 1963 to the present.
Organized in eight parts, the book reflects on Schifrin's cosmopolitan
experience and provides impressions and vignettes of the extraordinary
people with whom he worked. As a composer whose works bridge three main
musical styles--jazz, classical, and film and television--his
autobiography offers invaluable insights on all three genres, as well as
politics, literature, and travel. This significant volume includes over
30 photos, appendixes listing Schifrin's works, and a discography, as
well as an audio CD featuring some of Schifrin's greatest compositions.