Michael Gorfaine + Samuel Schwartz
For more than forty years, Michael Gorfaine and Samuel Schwartz have been Hollywood’s preeminent music talent agents representing the most sought-after and influential composers, songwriters, music supervisors and record producers working in film, television and video games.
From established icons to rising newcomers, their agency’s roster has included the likes of John Williams, Ennio Morricone, James Horner, Thomas Newman, Michael Giacchino, Alan Silvestri, Glen Ballard, Mike Post, James Newton Howard, Harry Gregson-Williams, Brian Tyler, Steve Jablonsky, Ramin Djawadi, Sean Callery, A.R. Rahman, James Taylor, Yo-Yo Ma, Elliot Goldenthal, Michael Kamen, and many others. Their clients have amassed hundreds of Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, Golden Globe and BAFTA awards and nominations.
Both Gorfaine and Schwartz have been groundbreakers, transforming the world of composer talent representation and building the Gorfaine/Schwartz Agency into a vital industry player since its founding in 1982. Both men began their careers at The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), where Gorfaine served as co-director of the Los Angeles Membership office and where Schwartz ran the Film and Television Music Department. Together, they saw a pressing need to bring more creative and economic control into the hands of the composers who had always been so crucial to the emotional resonance of movies and television programs. Key to this achievement was the agency’s consistently vigorous pursuit of close relationships with studio executives, producers, directors and new media pioneers, through which GSA’s clients increasingly have been able to command top fees, forge fruitful partnerships and branch out into emerging media.
In 2013, along with their colleague Jamie Richardson, the agents launched an exciting new entertainment concept, Film Concerts Live, a co- venture with the prestigious arts management company IMG Artists, through which the two companies develop existing feature films for presentation in concert halls around the world with major symphony orchestras performing the scores live and in sync to the picture. Over the past decade, more than 250 symphony orchestras and have presented more than a thousand performances of FCL’s film offerings, which include Home Alone, Back to the Future, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Princess Bride, Casino Royale, Skyfall, Spectre, Apollo 13, How to Train Your Dragon, Shrek 2, Superman, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.