| James Horner | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | James Roy Horner |
| Born | August 14, 1953 |
| Origin | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Genres | film score |
| Occupations | Composer |
| Years active | since 1979 |
| Associated acts | Will Jennings, Celine Dion, Sissel Kyrkjebø, Ian Underwood, Randy Kerber, Faith Hill, Linda Ronstadt, Charlotte Church, Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Leona Lewis |
James Roy Horner (born August 14, 1953) is an American composer, orchestrator and conductor of orchestral and film music. He is noted for the integration of choral and electronic elements in many of his film scores, and for frequent use of Celtic musical elements.
Horner's career spans over three decades and he has composed several of Hollywood's most famous film scores. His score to the 1997 film Titanic remains the best selling orchestral film soundtrack of all time.[1]
In addition, Horner has scored over 100 films, frequently collaborating with acclaimed directors such as James Cameron and Ron Howard. Other scores he worked on include those of Braveheart, Willow Apollo 13, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Glory, The Mask of Zorro, The Legend of Zorro, Enemy at the Gates, The Missing, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, A Beautiful Mind, The Perfect Storm, Avatar, and, most recently, The Karate Kid, which was released in June 2010.
His body of work is notable for including the scores to the two highest-grossing films of all time; Titanic and Avatar, both of which were directed by James Cameron.
Horner is a two-time Academy Award-winner, and has received a total of 10 Oscar nominations. He has won numerous other awards, including the Golden Globe Award and the Grammy Award.
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Horner was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Austrian immigrants Joan (née Fraenkel) and Harry Horner, who was a production designer, set designer and occasional film director.[2]
Horner started playing piano at the age of five. His early years were spent in London, where he attended the Royal College of Music. He received his bachelor's degree in music from the University of Southern California, and eventually earned a master's and started working on his doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles where he studied with Paul Chihara, among others. After several scoring assignments with the American Film Institute in the 1970s, he finished his teaching of music theory at UCLA and turned to film scoring.
Horner's first major film score was for the 1979 film, The Lady in Red. Like Les Baxter, he began his film scoring career by working for B movie director and producer Roger Corman, with his first composer credit for Corman's big-budget Battle Beyond the Stars. His works steadily gained notice in Hollywood, which led him to take on larger projects. Horner made a breakthrough in 1982, when he had the chance to score for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, establishing himself as a mainstream composer.
Horner continued composing music for high-profile releases in the 1980s, including 48 Hrs. (1982), Krull (1983), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Commando (1985), Cocoon (1985), Aliens (1986), Willow (1988), Glory and Field of Dreams (both 1989).
Aliens earned Horner his first Academy Award nomination. He has been nominated an additional nine times since. Horner's scores have been sampled in film trailers for other movies. The climax of the track Bishop's Countdown from his score for Aliens ranks fifth in the most commonly-used soundtrack cues for film trailers.[3] Also, an unused fragment from Aliens was featured in a scene from Die Hard. Several films whose scores were composed by Michael Kamen have had trailers featuring Horner's music; most notably, the music from Willow is substituted for the theme Kamen wrote for the 1993 remake of The Three Musketeers. Horner also added his nominated Braveheart "For the Love of a Princess" single for Robert Zemeckis's Theatrical Trailer of Cast Away.
Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Horner also wrote orchestral scores for children's films (particularly those produced by Amblin Entertainment), with credits for An American Tail (1986), The Land Before Time (1988), An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991), We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993), and Casper, Jumanji, and Balto (all from 1995).
1995 saw Horner produce no fewer than six scores, including his commercially successful and critically-acclaimed works for Braveheart and Apollo 13, both of which earned him Academy Award nominations. Horner's greatest financial and critical success would come in 1997, with the score to the motion picture, Titanic, which was greatly influenced by the music of Clannad.[4] The album became the best-selling primarily orchestral soundtrack in history, selling over 27 million copies worldwide.[5]
At the 70th Academy Awards, Horner won Oscars for Best Original Dramatic Score and Best Original Song for "My Heart Will Go On" (which he co-wrote with Will Jennings). In addition, Horner and Jennings won three Grammy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for the soundtrack and My Heart Will Go On.[6][7][8] Titanic also marked the first time in ten years that Horner worked with director James Cameron. Following the highly stressful scoring sessions for Aliens, Horner declared that he would never work with Cameron again. Horner described the experience of scoring the film as "a nightmare".
Since Titanic, Horner has continued to score for major productions (including The Perfect Storm, A Beautiful Mind, Enemy At The Gates, The Mask of Zorro, The Legend of Zorro, House of Sand and Fog and Bicentennial Man).
Aside from scoring major productions, Horner periodically works on smaller projects such as Iris, Radio and Bobby Jones: A Stroke of Genius. He received his eighth and ninth Academy Award nominations for A Beautiful Mind (2001) and House of Sand and Fog (2003), but lost on both occasions to Howard Shore. He frequently collaborates with film director Ron Howard, a partnership that began with Cocoon in 1985. Coincidentally, Horner's end title music from Glory can be heard in the trailer for Howard's Backdraft.
Horner composed the current theme music for the CBS Evening News. The theme was introduced as part of the debut of Katie Couric as anchor on September 5, 2006. It has since been adopted by most other CBS News programs as well.
Horner recollaborated with James Cameron on the 2009 film Avatar, which was released in December 2009 and has since become the highest grossing film of all time, surpassing Titanic (also directed by Cameron and scored by Horner).
Horner spent over two years working on the score for Avatar, and did not take on any other projects during that time. Horner's work on Avatar earned him numerous award nominations, including his tenth Oscar nomination, a Golden Globe nomination, a BAFTA nomination, and a Grammy Award nomination, all of which he lost to Michael Giacchino for Up.
Regarding the experience of scoring Avatar, Horner said, "Avatar has been the most difficult film I have worked on and the biggest job I have undertaken... I work from four in the morning to about ten at night and that’s been my way of life since March. That's the world I'm in now and it makes you feel estranged from everything. I'll have to recover from that and get my head out of Avatar."[9] It is currently unknown whether or not Horner will return as composer for the sequel(s) to Avatar.
Horner was recently confirmed to compose the score for the film The Karate Kid replacing Atli Örvarsson. This is the first film Horner has worked on since Avatar.[10] The film was released in 2010 to positive reviews.
Horner has been criticised for transposing hooks, orchestral motifs, or larger passages from other scores of his own or of other composers.[11][12][13] These contentions are points of fierce debates between supporters of Horner and his detractors.[14]
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Horner has received 10 Academy Award nominations, 8 for Best Original Music Score, and twice for Best Original Song. Out of these nominations, Horner has won two Oscars, for Best Original Score and Best Original Song for Titanic.
Horner has also received five Golden Globe nominations, all in the category of Best Original Score, winning one, for Titanic, as well as seven Grammy Award nominations, winning for Glory (Best Score), An American Tail, and Titanic, the latter two being in the category of Best Song. He has also received three BAFTA nominations, but has not yet won.
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