It is with great sadness that we mark the passing of Elmer Bernstein, the legendary Academy award winning composer and great friend and mentor to the Woodstock Film Festival.

Elmer was a long time Woodstocker whose artistry, integrity and personal kindness will forever live on in the magnificent scores he composed over a career that spanned more than half a century..

Known as one of the titans of Hollywood’s golden age, with 200 film and TV credits and 13 Academy award nominations, Elmer remained on the cutting edge of his profession into his ’80’s, when, in 2002, he was nominated for an Oscar for his brilliant score for Far From Heaven.

We join the world in celebrating the man and his music and are thankful to have known him.

“For over a hundred years, Woodstock has been a place of dreams and magic. It was a place of dreams for visual art, for crafts, for music, for popular music, for theater, for political philosophy, for alternative lifestyles and it is entirely fitting that Woodstock should become a place of dreams and magic for films at this time.” —Elmer Bernstein, 2001