Shortly before his seventh birthday Amram and his family moved to a farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His grandfather, who had been active in early American Zionist circles and had spent considerable time in Palestine, taught him basic Hebrew. His father introduced him to cantorial music and classical music. Amram's uncle loved jazz, introducing him to recordings of great jazz artists, and took him to see many of those artists in person.

At the age of seven, Amram began piano lessons, experimenting with trumpet and tuba before settling on the French horn. In 1948 he spent a year at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, but earned a bachelor's degree in European history from George Washington University in 1952. During those years, Amram was an extra horn player with the National Symphony.

Amram spent 1952-1954 with the United States Army in Europe, playing with the Seventh Army Symphony. While stationed In Paris for a year, Amram devoted himself to composition, and played with Lionel Hampton's band and other jazz groups.

Amram returned to the United States in 1955, attending the Manhattan School of Music. During that time he supported himself by playing with Charles Mingus at Café Bohemia and Oscar Pettiford at Birdland. He also led his own jazz group at the Five Spot Café on the Bowery.

In 1959 Amram wrote music for and acted in, "Pull My Daisy", a film created and narrated by Jack Kerouac. The film featured other Beat Generation writers, including Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. During the same year, he met director John Frankenheimer, and he was impressed enough by the composer that he asked him to compose the score for his television adaptation of Turn of the Screw.

His best-known work as a film composer, however, came with Frankenheimer's 1962 film adaptation of The Manchurian Candidate. Amram's score was a blend of post-war jazz, latin music and atonal classical composition. The orchestral passages in particular boast a programmatic, highly rhythmic style that almost sounds like a bridge between the work of Anton Webern and Frank Zappa. The score is also notable for its unusual orchestrations, boasting such instruments as the harpsichord, and for the usage of jazz musicians such as Paul Horn for the recording of the score, as most soundtracks from that time were generally recorded using orchestral musicians. However, the film was not a popular success when it was released (partially due to the fact that, soon after the film's release, President John Kennedy was assassinated), though it is now regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, and Amram's score is highly-regarded as well. The original soundtrack recording was briefly released on cd in 1997.

Reference
Vibrations: The Adventures and Musical Times of David Amram by Douglas Brinkley - Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press (January, 2001) ISBN: 1560253088

Discography

Pull My Daisy: Premier Recordings September 26, 1995 ASIN: B00000205T
At Home/Around the World: Flying Fish Records September 17, 1996 ASIN: B000000MES
Havana/New York: Flying Fish Records September 29, 1992 ASIN: B000000ME8
No More Walls: Flying Fish Records June 10, 1997 ASIN: B000000MWE
Pictures of the Gone World: Synergy Ent February 8, 2005 ASIN: B0007GAEMG
Triple Concerto: Flying Fish Records March 10, 1998 ASIN: B000005ZJG
Southern Stories: Cedar Glen August 27, 1999 ASIN: B00000K4JB
Manchurian Candidate: Premier Recordings November 25, 1997 ASIN: B000002063

Bibliography
Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac Thunder's Mouth Press (January, 2003) ISBN: 1560254602

Trivia
Children's folk singer Raffi references Amram in the song Peanut Butter Sandwich:

    "One for me and one for David Amram"