Superhero composer Shirley Walker, 61, dies

Posted:
Nov 30, 2006

Daytime Emmy-winning composer Shirley Walker, who scored animated adaptations of Superman, Batman and Spawn, died Wednesday in Reno, Nevada at 61.

A pioneer among women film composers, Walker suffered a brain aneurysm and did not regain consciousness.

Walker shared a Daytime Emmy Award in 2001 for Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction and Composition in connection with her work in the Warner Bros. series Batman Beyond. A year earlier, she shared an Emmy nomination for the same category and the same series. In 2002, she and three colleagues shared another Emmy nomination in that category for WB's The Zeta Project.

She was nominated three times for an Annie: in 1995 for Best Individual Achievement for Music in the Field of Animation for Batman: The Animated Series; in 1997 for Best Individual Achievement: Music in a TV Production for Superman: The Animated Series; and, with three colleagues, in 2001 for Outstanding Individual Achievement for Music Score in an Animated Television Production in connection with "The Accomplice," an episode of The Zeta Project.

In live action, she was nominated for a 1996 Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Music Composition for a Series. This was in recognition of "The River of Stars," an episode of Space: Above and Beyond.

Born on April 10, 1945 in Napa, California, Walker was a conductor, pianist, synthesist and producer. She attended San Francisco State College on a piano scholarship, and studied composition with Dr. Roger Nixon and piano studies with Harald Logan of Berkeley, California.

While in high school, she was a soloist with the San Francisco Symphony. From 1964 to 1967, she performed with various hotel, jazz and art bands in San Francisco.

Between 1967 to 1978, she composed music for industrial films and wrote jingles. During this period, she was a pianist for the Oakland Symphony Orchestra for two seasons, and the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra for two seasons.

Her first movie credit was as a synthesizer player in Apocalypse Now (1979). However, she would soon acquire a career as a composer, starting with The End of August (1982). Her numerous movies included Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Willard and the Final Destination trilogy. She also worked as an orchestrator, arranger and conductor, especially for Danny Elfman, with whom she collaborated on such films as Batman and Batman Returns.

Walker's live-action TV series work included Falcon Crest, The Flash, The Others and China Beach.

She was the composer of the much-praised 1986 special Disney's Fluppy Dogs, a pilot for a never-released series.With J. Peter Robinson, she composed for the Madhouse Productions TV series Spawn, which aired on HBO.

Walker also scored the 1993 Warner Bros. animated feature film Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.

Her score for the live-action horror thriller Black Christmas can be heard in movie theaters this holiday season. Her last project, the animated DC: The New Frontier, is set for direct-to-video release in 2007.

Since 1994, Walker was a member of the Executive Music Branch Committee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; she was also on its Awards Committee from 1987 to 1988.

From 1994 until her death, she was on the board of directors of the Recording Musicians Association.

Vice-president of the Society of Composers and Lyricists from 1988 to 1992, she also served on its board of directors and working conditions committee.

Shirley Walker is survived by Don, her husband since 1967, and their sons Colin, born in 1970, and Ian, born in 1972.