Klaus Erich Dieter Doldinger (born May 12, 1936 in Berlin) is a German musician and film/television composer.
He studied piano and clarinet music at the Düsseldorf conservatory in the late 1940s, graduating in 1957, though he eventually preferred saxophone, which would remain his Signature Instrument. He gained professional performing experience starting in the mid-1950s with the Dixieland jazz band The Feetwarmers and the ensemble Oscar's Trio (modeled after the work of Canadian jazz pianist Oscar Peterson). He then founded the band Passport in 1971 (also called "Klaus Doldinger's Passport"), which remains his best known ensemble and still enjoys success in Germany, with 28 albums to their name.
Doldinger also went on to become a successful film and television composer, with the instrumental theme tunes of some German crime & punishment shows since The '70s such as Tatort and A Case for Two, and the soundtracks of motion pictures such as Das Boot, The Neverending Story and Peter in Magicland.
Tropes & Trivia about his career:
- Associated Composer: His best known film scores were all composed for Wolfgang Petersen films. They collaborated for ten years between 1974's Einer von uns beiden and 1984's The Neverending Story — Petersen left Germany to work in the USA afterwards.
- The Cameo: He appeared
once in Tatort's Köln-set spinoff Ballauf und Schenk as a Street Musician, playing the series' theme with his sax. - Foreign Re-Score: For the US release of The Neverending Story, his classical orchestra soundtrack was replaced in large parts by a synthesizer-based soundtrack by Giorgio Moroder, much to the chagrin of Wolfgang Petersen.
- Electronic Music: He composed the instrumental synth opening themes for two very successful German detective series, Tatort and A Case for Two.
