Craig Safan

Craig Safan (born December 17, 1948, in Los Angeles, California) is an American composer for film and television,[1] whose biggest scores include The Last Starfighter, Angel, Mr. Wrong, Stand and Deliver, Fade to Black, Major Payne, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, and music to the TV series Cheers, for which he won numerous ASCAP awards.

Safan’s father was a B17 bomber pilot during World War II, and met his mother, Betty Torchin, in Laredo, Texas, while stationed there at the Army Air Force Base.

Growing tired of classical music, Safan’s mother hired a teacher for him named Helene Mirich Spear who taught "popular" piano, who had young Craig improvising in his first lesson.

"While in middle school I was going to an LA club called Shelly's Mann Hole and hearing all the great jazz pianists... Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Hampton Hawes, and more," Safan recalled.

"This became very important to me in scores such as Stand and Deliver where I created an entire percussion library from found objects and Wolfen, where I experimented with new composition techniques."

Karla Bonoff sang one of them on her first album, and he arranged songs for artists like Dirk Hamilton, Rod Taylor, and Emmylou Harris while working part-time in his father’s jewelry store.

“One day, while dressed in suit and tie and selling jewelry on credit, I received a call from an old friend from Brandeis who had married a young film director,” Safan recalled.

He scored a number of independent action comedies like The Great Smokey Roadblock (1977), Acapulco Gold (1978), Corvette Summer (1978), Roller Boogie (1979) and the like: fast-paced youth-oriented films with much rhythmic vibe.

Initially the music was to have been done by Chris Stein, guitarist for the rock band Blondie, but a contract had never been finalized for him to do so, so Safan was brought in late in the process to provide the film’s score instead.

Safan has also composed extensively for television, notably the hit sitcom Cheers (1982–93), which won for him numerous ASCAP awards for his music.

He also scored occasional episodes of the TV anthology shows, Amazing Stories (1985–86) and the revived The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1985) and The Twilight Zone (1985–86), Supercarrier (1988), the National Geographic Channel special Secrets of the Titanic (1986), and several fistfuls of made-for-TV movies in a number of genres, including Mission of the Shark: The Saga of the U.S.S.

Safan’s style has often consisted of improvising as a form of composition that allowed him to quickly express himself to the visual story unfolding on the screen.

[6][7] Craig Safan won the ASCAP Film and Television Award for scoring a “Top TV Series” seven years in a row, 1988-1994, for Cheers.