David Mansfield

David Mansfield (born September 13, 1956) is an American musician and composer.
Mansfield was raised in Leonia, New Jersey. His father, Newton Mansfield was a first violinist in the New York Philharmonic. David played guitar, pedal steel guitar and fiddle in his first band, called Quacky Duck and His Barnyard Friends, which also included two sons of Tony Bennett.
Bob Dylan asked Mansfield to tour with him on his 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour; he remained in Dylan's band through their 1978 world tour.
After the Revue ended in 1976, Mansfield and two other members of Dylan's band, T-Bone Burnett and Steven Soles, formed The Alpha Band. The band released three albums, The Alpha Band in 1977, Spark in the Dark in 1977, and The Statue Makers of Hollywood in 1978. While Mansfield in 1978 was working on the album, The Statue Makers of Hollywood with The Alpha Band, he appeared as a guitarist on Desire Wire by a struggling pop/rock artist Cindy Bullens that same year.
In 1986, Mansfield was an initial member of Bruce Hornsby and the Range, including playing the title instrument on the hit "Mandolin Rain". However, he left the Range before their first tour.
Since The Alpha Band broke up, Mansfield has continued to work as a musician in sessions for Dylan, Burnett, Johnny Cash, Nanci Griffith, Roger McGuinn, Sam Phillips, Mark Heard, The Roches, Edie Brickell, Spinal Tap, Lucinda Williams, Dwight Yoakam, Victoria Williams, Loudon Wainwright III, Willie Nile, Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen and others.
Mansfield composed the music for the 1980 film Heaven's Gate – he appeared in the movie, playing the fiddle on roller skates – and has since gone on to write scores for a number of other films, including others directed by Heaven's Gate's Michael Cimino. Mansfield cobbled together the soundtrack album for Songcatcher. He also composed the music for the soundtrack to The Ballad of Little Jo (1993), a movie written and directed by Maggie Greenwald, whom he married in 1994. Together they adopted two children. Maisie Mansfield-Greenwald (1997) and Lulu Mansfield-Greenwald (2000). He also composed the score with Van Dyke Parks for Walter Hill's Broken Trail (2006), and they were nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special (Original Dramatic Score).
Filmography
1980 Heaven's Gate
1985 Year of the Dragon
1986 Club Paradise
1987 The Sicilian
1989 Miss Firecracker
1990 Desperate Hours
1991 Late for Dinner
1992 Me and Veronica
1993 The Ballad of Little Jo
1995 Outlaws: The Legend of O.B. Taggart
1996 Deep Crimson
1997 Floating
1997 Road Ends
1997 The Apostle
1998 El evangelio de las maravillas
1998 Dark Harbor
1999 Tumbleweeds
1999 No One Writes to the Colonel
2000 Such Is Life
2000 Ropewalk
2000 A Good Baby
2000 Songcatcher
2002 Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
2003 Flora's Garment Bursting Into Bloom
2005 Transamerica
2006 Stephanie Daley
2006 Diggers
2006 El carnaval de Sodoma
2007 Then She Found Me
2008 The Guitar
2011 Certainty
2011 The Reasons of the Heart
2013 The Last Keepers
2016 Sophie and the Rising Sun
2019 Devil Between the Legs
References
External links
David Mansfield Official Website
1956 births
American blues guitarists
American fiddlers
American film score composers
American folk guitarists
American male guitarists
American rock guitarists
Place of birth missing (living people)
Bruce Hornsby and the Range members
Living people
Guitarists from New Jersey
Pedal steel guitarists
People from Leonia, New Jersey
20th-century American guitarists
American male film score composers
21st-century violinists
Varèse Sarabande Records artists