Craig Safan (born December 17, 1948 in Los Angeles, California) is an Ameri… Read Full Bio ↴Craig Safan (born December 17, 1948 in Los Angeles, California) is an American composer for film and television, whose biggest scores include The Last Starfighter, Mr. Wrong, Stand and Deliver, Fade to Black, Major Payne, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, and music to the TV series Cheers, for which he won numerous ASCAP awards. His style consisted of often improvising as a form of composition that allowed him to quickly express himself.

Craig Safan was born in Los Angeles, son of an L.A. native Eugene Safan, who owned a downtown jewelry store. Safan’s father was a B17 bomber pilot during World War II who met his mother, Betty Torchin, in Laredo, Texas while stationed there at the Army Air Force Base. She was a piano virtuoso who had studied at the Cleveland Conservatory.

Craig Safan won the ASCAP Film and Television Award for scoring a “Top TV Series” seven years in a row, 1988-1994, for Cheers. In 1991 he was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Music and Lyrics for the TV series Life Goes On (1989), shared with Mark Mueller (lyricist). In 2014 he was presented with the Basil Poledouris award for a Film Music Legend at International Film Festival of the Province of Córdoba in Spain.