Born November 18, 1955 in New York City.
The exceptionally prolific motion picture composer best known for scoring all of the Coen Brothers' films.
His first score was for Blood Simple in 1984, and he has been working consistantly since then, averaging 4-6 film scores a year.
The best way to show the diversity of his projects, for both good and bad, Carter Burwell has worked on is to list some of the films he has scored:
When Mr. Burwell is on, his work is stunning. When I first saw Fargo I was most moved by two things: the overwhelming and profound use of white, and Mr. Burwell's haunting score. In Raising Arizona, the musical themes play with a huge range of instruments and sounds, bringing together banjos, yodellers and Beethoven.
Unfortunately, Mr. Burwell's CDs are usually poorly considered by the studios that release them. His scores are lumped together, usually two films to a CD. Themes can be fractured and/or spread illogically across tracks. Frequently his work is completely overlooked and never released to stand on its own merit.