Charles Gerhardt Has Died

News flash by Lukas Kendall

Conductor Charles Gerhardt has passed away in his sleep at the age of 71. He had been ill for a short time. In recent years he was retired and living in California.

Film music aficionados everywhere owe a debt to Gerhardt, who was the first conductor (with producer George Korngold, son of Erich Wolfgang) to bring film music to record stores and mainstream awareness. His RCA Classic Film Scores series in the early 1970s remains the best-ever program of film music re-recordings; go here for a past FSD discussing the albums. He also conducted film music collections for Readers' Digest, and fine re-recordings of John Williams's Star Wars Trilogy scores.

We will have more information, tributes and biographical details on Gerhardt in the coming weeks, and issues of FSM.

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