William T. Stromberg

William T. Stromberg has become almost uniquely identified with the performance and recording of neglected classic and B-movie film scores. A composer in his own right mainly of film music, he has also devoted much time to the unearthing and restoration of numerous forgotten film scores. Several of his recordings have been premiere efforts of complete films scores, such as the 1954 classic The Egyptian by Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Newman. Other recordings excise repetitive cues while offering virtually the complete score, such as the 1944 Max Steiner music for The Adventures of Mark Twain. Stromberg has often been aided in the restoration process by film composer John Morgan. The two have teamed up in a series of recordings for the Naxos label (and its sister label Marco Polo) that have involved film scores by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Hugo Friedhofer, Hans J. Salter, Frank Skinner, Dimitri Tiomkin, and many others. Stromberg has also recorded pure symphonic music; but here again he has often delved into reviving music long forgotten, such as the Symphonies No. 1 and No. 2 by Meredith Willson, a composer chiefly known for his popular musical The Music Man. Beside Naxos and Marco Polo, Stromberg has recorded for VCE, Tribute Film Classics, and RCA. William T. Stromberg was born in Oceanside, CA, on May 23, 1964. He was precocious: at 11 he was studying composition and soon after started providing scores for amateur films. He took private lessons in conducting and orchestration after his 1982 relocation to Hollywood. Stromberg soon began composing scores for films, and among his earlier efforts were a pair from 1991, Oddball Hall and Edge of Honor. Among his more memorable projects was the score for the 1995 documentary Trinity and Beyond, which he recorded in 1997 with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra for VCE. By the mid-'90s Stromberg was immersed in the restoration and recording of film scores for Marco Polo. Among the first releases in the series were a pair of 1997 releases: a Hugo Friedhofer collection that included music from The Rains of Ranchipur (1955) and two Korngold scores, Another Dawn (1937) and Escape Me Never (1935). Stromberg was also exploring concert music with several Ferde Grofé albums, including the 2002 Naxos release of Death Valley Suite. His newer recordings include the 2007 CD of Korngold's The Sea Hawk (1940) and Deception (1946), also on Naxos.