Los Angeles, CA · orchestral rock · film score · art-rock

Danny Elfman

3 upcoming festivals

Oingo Boingo's madman turned Tim Burton's composer — a berserk orchestral-rock spectacle that mashes film scores into art-punk chaos.

Danny Elfman came up in Los Angeles as the frontman of Oingo Boingo, the new wave band that grew out of the theatrical troupe The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, writing horn-driven, hyperactive songs with a nervous, high-pitched vocal delivery. His scoring career began with Tim Burton's Pee-wee's Big Adventure, and the two have worked together across most of Burton's filmography, including Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas, on which Elfman also sang. His other credits include Batman, Spider-Man, and the theme to The Simpsons.

In recent years Elfman has returned to writing and performing songs of his own, working in a heavier, more abrasive vein that draws on industrial and art-rock alongside orchestral arrangement. Live, that material is typically presented with a band and orchestral players, mixing new songs with reworked film music.

orchestral rockfilm scoreart-rock