This wasn’t supposed to happen. Nick Redman, a close friend for nearly 30 years and a collaborator on dozens of film and record projects, died on January 17. He was only 63, and while he had been battling cancer for the past two years, we all thought he’d be around much longer. He was a major presence on the film-music scene, having produced hundreds of albums (including first-ever releases of such classics as Laura and Dirty Harry and many of the brilliant scores of Jerry Fielding); and he was a formidable filmmaker too, earning a 1996 Oscar nomination as producer of The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage. He was best man at my wedding and many of the DVDs and CDs pictured on this website (projects I’ve contributed to over the years) were his productions. Writing his obituary for Variety was one of the hardest tasks I’ve ever faced.