page_title: Danny Elfman
section_title: Concert and stage music
hierarchical_section_title: Danny Elfman / Career / Concert and stage music
caption_attribution_description: English: Danny Elfman, Halloween 2015 at Hollywood Bowl...Nightmare Before XMAS Live!!!
context_page_description: Daniel Robert Elfman is an American composer, singer, songwriter, record producer and actor. He first became well known as the singer-songwriter for the new wave band Oingo Boingo in the early 1980s, and has since garnered international recognition for writing over 100 feature film scores, as well as compositions for television, stage productions, and the concert hall.
  Elfman has frequently worked with directors Tim Burton, Sam Raimi, and Gus Van Sant, with notable achievements the scores for 16 Burton-directed films including Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Alice in Wonderland, and Dumbo; Raimi's Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and Oz the Great and Powerful; and Van Sant's Academy Award-nominated films Good Will Hunting and Milk. He wrote music for all of the Men in Black and Fifty Shades of Grey franchise films, the songs and score for the Burton-produced animated musical The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the themes for the popular television series Desperate Housewives and The Simpsons.
context_section_description: Elfman's first piece of original concert music, Serenada Schizophrana, was commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, who premiered the piece on February 23, 2005, at Carnegie Hall. Subsequent concert works include his first Violin Concerto "Eleven Eleven", co-commissioned by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, Stanford Live at Stanford University, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, which premiered at Smetana Hall in Prague on June 21, 2017, with Sandy Cameron on violin and John Mauceri conducting the Czech National Symphony Orchestra; the Piano Quartet, co-commissioned by the Lied Center for Performing Arts University of Nebraska and the Berlin Philharmonic Piano Quartet, which premiered February 6, 2018, in Lincoln, Nebraska; and the Percussion Quartet, commissioned by Third Coast Percussion and premiered at the Philip Glass Days And Nights Festival in Big Sur on October 10, 2019.
  In 2008, Elfman accepted his first commission for the stage, composing the music for Twyla Tharp's Rabbit and Rogue ballet, co-commissioned by American Ballet Theatre and Orange County Performing Arts Center and premiering on June 3, 2008, at the Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center. Other works for stage include the music for Cirque Du Soleil's Iris in 2011, and incidental music for the Broadway production of Taylor Mac's Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus in 2019.
  In October 2013, Elfman returned to the stage for the first time since his band Oingo Boingo disbanded to sing his vocal parts to a handful of The Nightmare Before Christmas songs as part of a concert titled Danny Elfman's Music from the Films of Tim Burton, featuring suites of music from 15 Tim Burton films newly arranged by Elfman. The concert has since toured internationally and has played in Japan, Australia, Mexico and throughout Europe and the United States. Since 2015, Elfman has appeared near annually in a Hollywood Bowl Halloween concert featuring full orchestra performing the Nightmare Before Christmas score live to the film projection.
  In 2019 it was announced Elfman had been commissioned to write a piece for the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain set to premiere in 2020, and a percussion concerto for Colin Currie and the London Philharmonic Orchestra for spring 2021. Other works in the planning phase are a cello concerto and a project that involves chamber orchestra and Elfman's own voice.
  It was announced that Elfman would be taking part in Coachella 2020 with a set titled "Past, Present and Future! From Boingo to Batman and Beyond!" Elfman clarified on his Instagram page that this would not be an Oingo Boingo reunion, writing "I’m creating a live mix of my last 40 years— both film music and songs... that includes my Boingo years, my composer years and a few things I’ve been working on for the last year or so, which will be world premieres."
caption: Elfman's The Nightmare Before Christmas live at the Hollywood Bowl.
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