Jamshied Sharifi, known for his Tony winning orchestration of The Band's Visit, died August 15 after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 64 years old. The news was first reported by Echoes.

A multi-instrumentalist, Mr Sharifi was a gifted pianist, guitar player, percussionist, and flautist. Born in Kansas to an Iranian father and an American mother, he was raised in the stew of cultural exchange, learning Middle Eastern, North African, and jazz music from his father, and European classical and liturgical music from his mother. This sonic blending, as well as his deep understanding of musical layering, would come to define his career.

Mr. Sharifi was guided by the fusion of genres, traditions, and sounds, finding connections and harmonic layers where they had previously been overlooked. A graduate of the Berklee College of Music, he led the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble from 1985 to 1992, teaching at his alma mater for 7 years before moving to New York to pursue a career as a composer and orchestrator.

For the screen, Mr. Sharifi worked closely with Michael Gibbs before stepping out on his own to compose the scores for Muppets From Space, Down To Earth, the Nickelodeon films Harriet the Spy and Clockstoppers. Additionally, Mr. Sharifi contributed work to the scores of The Thomas Crown Affair and The Rugrats Movie. Politically, he provided arrangements that were used at the first inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009.

For The Band's Visit, Mr. Sharifi worked with composer David Yazbeck to elevate the Israeli-Egyptian score to new heights. With much of the onstage action devoted to the members of an Egyptian Police Orchestra, and their exploits in an Israeli desert town, Mr. Sharifi used just eight musicians to expand the show's themes of cultural exchange, fusing together disparate musical traditions to create a haunting whole. Mr. Sharifi created a rich sonic palette that was unlike anything that had played Broadway before, or since, and numerous orchestrators have cited him as the inspiration for their own rejection of strict genre constraints.

Sharifi is survived by his wife, Miyuki Sakamoto, his children Layla and Kai, and his father, brother, and sister.