Marvin Hamlisch: Broadway composer dies age 68

Broadway composer Marvin Hamlisch, who wrote the Tony Award-winning score to the musical 'A Chorus Line,' died in Los Angeles on 6 Aug 2012, at age 68, following a brief illness.

He is best known to theatre-goers for his score on the Broadway musical 'A Chorus Line,' for which he won both a Tony and Pullitzer Prize. He also wrote the scores for the Broadway musicals: 'They're Playing Our Song,' 'Smile,' 'The Goodbye Girl' and 'Sweet Smell of Success.'

Hemlisch won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Direction for his work on Barbra Streisand's 2001 live concert 'Timeless.' He was awarded a Grammy for his music for the 1977 James Bond movie, 'A Spy Who Loved Me,' and an Academy Award for his score to the 1973 film, "The Way We Were."

He was one of only eleven people to have been awarded an Emmy Award, Grammy Award, the Oscar and Tony Award. This collection of all four is referred to as an "EGOT". Hamlisch and Richard Rodgers are the only two people to have won this series of awards and a Pulitzer Prize.

Hamlisch held the position of Principal Pops Conductor for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the San Diego Symphony, the Seattle Symphony, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, The National Symphony Orchestra Pops and The Pasadena Symphony and Pops.

Born in New York city in 1944, Hemlisch was a child prodigy who by the age of five was playing on the piano music he heard on the radio. At age seven he was admitted to Juilliard's Department of Music. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1967 from Queens College.

Hemlisch is survived by his wife Terre Blair, who he married in 1989.