John Cacavas

John Cacavas was a songwriter and composer for film and television who received two Primetime Emmy nominations over the course of a career that spanned several decades.

The North Dakota native studied music at Northwestern University and went on to become an arranger for the U.S. Army Band before going to work at CBS as a composer and conductor. 

Cavacas began working in film and television in the early 1970s and worked steadily through the 1990s. His feature films included Horror Express, Airport 1975 and Airport '77, but he was most prolific in television.

He broke into television with The Adventures of Alexander Hawkins, a made-for-TV movie that starred Telly Savalas. He continued his association with Savalas as the composer of more than 100 episodes of the detective drama Kojak from 1973 to 1978.

In addition to Kojak, his series credits included Amy Prentiss, Kate McShane, The Bionic Woman, Hawaii Five-O, ABC Weekend Specials, Mrs. Columbo, B.J. and the Bear, The Equalizer, Matlock, Lady Blue, Columbo and Murder, She Wrote.

He also worked on numerous telefilms and miniseries, including The Elevator, SST: Death Flight, Murder at the World Series, Superdome, The Executioner's Song, A Death in California, Margaret Bourke-White, Confessional and Perfect Murder, Perfect Town: JonBenét and the City of Boulder.

His Emmy nominations came in 1975, for Kojak, and in 1979, for the police drama Eischied.

In 2005 he expanded into other media when he provided the theme song for the video game Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories.

Also an author, Cavacas wrote two instructional books, Music Arranging and Orchestration (1985) and The Art of Writing Music: A Practical Book for Composers and Arrangers (1993), as well as a 2003 memoir, It's More Than Do-Re-Mi: My Life in Music, which he wrote with his wife, Bonnie Becker Cacavas. In 2007 he wrote a novel, A Song for Lynbidium. 

Cavacas died January 28, 2014. He was 83.