Dan Wallin, Oscar-Nominated and Emmy-Winning Music Mixer, Dies at 97
10.04.2024 - 19:03
/ variety.com
Jon Burlingame Dan Wallin, the music scoring engineer who recorded such classic film scores as “Spartacus,” “Bullitt,” “The Wild Bunch” and “Out of Africa,” died early Wednesday in Hawaii. He was 97.
Twice Oscar-nominated for best sound (1970’s “Woodstock” and 1976’s “A Star Is Born”), he won a 2009 Emmy for sound mixing on the Academy Awards telecast and received two additional Emmy nominations in the sound mixing category (1992’s “Citizen Cohn,” 1996’s “Gotti”). But it was Wallin’s skill behind the console, recording and mixing musical scores for movies and TV, that won him legions of fans among nearly all of Hollywood’s top composers and ensured steady employment for more than half a century.
He recorded the music an estimated 500 films, including those for “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Cool Hand Luke” and “Finian’s Rainbow” in the 1960s; “The Way We Were,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Nashville,” “King Kong” and “Saturday Night Fever” in the 1970s; “Somewhere in Time,” “The Right Stuff” and “Prizzi’s Honor” in the 1980s; “The Fugitive,” “Waiting to Exhale” and “The Insider” in the 1990s; and “Far From Heaven,” “Seabiscuit” and “Rocky Balboa” in the 2000s. His television credits were equally stellar, including multiple Emmy winners “Roots,” “Eleanor and Franklin,” “The Day After,” “Lonesome Dove” and “Lost.” Composer Michael Giacchino, who often hired Wallin to record his music (including “The Incredibles,” “Ratatouille,” and “Up”), told Variety: “Danny came up when being an engineer really meant you were an engineer.
He could build anything and also understood why and how it all worked. “In working with him, you’d think he’d be most valuable in teaching you about recording, but in getting to work with him for so many years, what he
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