Howard Shore
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Image:Howard Shore.jpg Howard Leslie Shore (born October 18, 1946) is a Canadian film composer, best known for composing the score to The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
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Early career
He was born to a Jewish family in Toronto, Canada, and studied music at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. From 1969 to 1972, he performed with the group Lighthouse. He was the musical director for the television show Saturday Night Live from 1975 to 1980, appearing in many musical sketches including the All-Nurse Band and dressed as a beekeeper for a John Belushi/Dan Aykroyd performance of the Slim Harpo classic I'm a King Bee. He also suggested the name for the Blues Brothers to Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.
Successes
Shore is regarded by some as one of the most versatile film composers of our day, and has written the music for such major film productions as Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, Ed Wood, Se7en, Dogma, High Fidelity, Panic Room and The Aviator, the last of which earned him a Golden Globe. Since The Brood in 1979, he has been a consistent collaborator with David Cronenberg, scoring all his subsequent films except The Dead Zone (1983, scored by Michael Kamen). However Shore was not nominated for any Oscars until Lord of the Rings.
The Lord of the Rings
His greatest success to date is his score for Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. The score for the first film, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, gained him an Oscar in 2002, while the final film, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, earned him another two Oscars (one for the score and one for the song "Into the West", sung by Annie Lennox) in 2004. Some critics have noted similarities between Shore's score and John Williams's score for Jurassic Park.
Since 2004, he has toured the world conducting local orchestras in the performance of his new symphonic arrangement of his highly acclaimed Lord of the Rings scores. The new work is entitled The Lord of the Rings: Symphony in Six Movements. There are two movements for each of the movies, and an intermission between the second and third movements. The concert presentation of the symphony also includes projected still images relating the music being performed to scenes from the films. Recently, however, Shore has been busy with other projects, leaving other conductors including Markus Huber, Alexander Mickelthwaite, and John Mauceri to lead the orchestras. Shore was criticised however for failing to show up in some of his concerts, while others were cancelled.
King Kong
Although he was supposed to compose the soundtrack for King Kong (indeed, he had already recorded most of the music), he was replaced by James Newton Howard due to "differing creative aspirations for the score".
Trivia
- He makes a cameo appearance on film in The Return of the King (extended edition) as a Guard of Rohan.
- Despite having his score removed late into post-production, Shore has a cameo near the end of King Kong as the conductor of the pit orchestra in the theatre. He is killed when Kong jumps from the stage, on top of Shore.
- Uncle of composer Ryan Shore.
See also
External links
- Official web site
- Howard Shore at the SoundtrackINFO project
- {{{2|{{{name|Howard Shore}}}}}} at The Internet Movie Database
- SMME (Shore's Musical Middle-Earth): A discussion site for fans of The Lord of the Rings soundtracksda:Howard Shore
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