American composer Richard Robbins was BOTD in 1940. Born in South Weymouth, Massachusetts, he studied piano from an early age, and graduated from the New England Conservatory in Boston. In 1976, he taught at the Mannes School of Music in New York City, where he met the filmmakers James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, who produced his music documentary Sweet Sounds. He then worked as an assistant on Ivory’s documentary Roseland, a film about ballroom dancers. Robbins became the resident composer for Merchant-Ivory films for the next 25 years, starting with their 1979 adaptation of Henry James‘ novel The Europeans, and their highly successful trilogy of E. M. Forster adaptations A Room With a View, Maurice and Howard’s End. His lustrous, romantic scores, drawing from classical and contemporary music, became a key component of the Merchant-Ivory house style, winning him the Golden Osella at the Venice Film Festival for Maurice and Oscar nominations for Howard’s End and the 1994 film The Remains of the Day. In 1996, his work was honoured at a gala concert at Carnegie Hall in New York to benefit AIDS research. Openly gay forever, he had a long-term affair with Merchant (with Ivory’s knowledge and consent), before settling into a 20 year relationship with artist Michael Schell. He died in 2012, aged 71.