Charles Bernstein

Talented, prolific and versatile film composer Charles Bernstein was born on February 28, 1943 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He conducted his own orchestral music at age sixteen and studied composition with Vitorio Giannini and Vincent Persichetti at Juilliard. Bernstein also attended the University of California; he received an Outstanding Graduate of the College Award, a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship and a Chancellor's Doctoral Teaching Fellowship while working with American composer Roy Harris. His impressively eclectic musical style ranges from comedy to drama to action to horror. Bernstein has supplied the scores for a bunch of enjoyably down'n'dirty 70's drive-in exploitation features: he turned up the funk with "That Man Bolt," went all-out groovy for the "Invasion of the Bee Girls," and kicked out the tuneful swinging country jams on "White Lightning" (a snippet of this score was used in the "Kill Bill Vol. 1" soundtrack), "Gator," "A Small Town in Texas," and "Nightmare in B