Born: October 18, 1946 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Genres: Film Music
Biography
Howard Shore has composed the scores for over 50 films, including The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, After Hours, and Seven. His collaborations with David Cronenberg have resulted in scores for Cronenberg's films The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, M. Butterfly, and Crash, spanning a nearly 20-year period by the year 2001.
Shore's formal education came at the Berklee School of Music in Boston. From 1969-1972 he recorded with the group Lighthouse. He was one of the original creators of Saturday Night Live and served as its musical director from 1975-1980. In 2000, Shore began work on one of the most expansive projects of his career when he signed on to produce scores for film adaptations of the Lord of the Rings series. He spent a year just working on the first film, using Tolkien's texts and drawing from eighth and ninth century music sources to try to evoke the books' magical worlds. ~ Stacia Proefrock, All Music Guide
Career Highlights: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Seven, Dead Ringers
First Major Screen Credit: Saturday Night Live: Lily Tomlin (1975)
Biography
In true Hollywood fashion, composer Howard Shore's "overnight" success with his intensely emotional, yet subtly unnerving score for the epic fantasy film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was, in fact, the culmination of a wildly diverse 20-plus-year career. Born in Toronto, Canada, on October 18, 1946, Shore earned his professional degree from the Berklee School of Music in Boston, MA, and shortly thereafter co-founded the Toronto-based rock outfit Lighthouse. This group managed to earn some small amount of success, while providing Shore the opportunity to display his talents as both a performer and a songwriter. His association with Lighthouse was relatively brief, and after he left the band, the young musician began exploring new mediums for his music. Thus, Shore found himself working closely with two fellow Canadians: Lorne Michaels and David Cronenberg. Under Michaels, Shore directed the musical content for the first five seasons of Saturday Night Live, also writing the instantly familiar original theme music. As his association with Saturday Night Live was ending, Shore was hired to compose the score for David Cronenberg's film The Brood. Shore would go on to orchestrate almost all of Cronenberg's following films -- except 1983's The Dead Zone -- while building an impressive and diverse body of work, including scores for such films as Videodrome, Places in the Heart, Dead Ringers, Big, The Silence of the Lambs, Seven, and High Fidelity.
While he received some amount of acclaim for his work after The Brood, Shore would achieve his greatest success with his work on Peter Jackson's highly anticipated adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. The first episode of the trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, proved to be a hit with both moviegoers and his musician peers alike, and Shore went on to earn his first Academy Award nomination and -- more importantly -- his first win. Additionally, Shore composed the music for the second and third installments of The Lord of the Rings trilogy -- The Two Towers and The Return of the King -- which, like the filming of the trilogy, were scored concurrently. Following his achievements with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Shore moved on to orchestrate two thrillers -- David Fincher's Panic Room and his tenth collaboration with Cronenberg, the late 2002 release Spider -- and the massive Martin Scorsese historical epic Gangs of New York, further displaying his standing as a preeminent film composer and one of the most hotly sought-after technicians in the industry.
In early 2004, while gearing up for Jackson's remake of King Kong, Shore took home his second and third Oscars, one for score and the other for song, when The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King swept the awards. ~ Ryan Shriver, All Movie Guide
Shore was born in Toronto, Canada, the son of Bernice (née Ash) and Mac Shore.[3] He studied music at Berklee College of Music in Boston after graduating from Forest Hill Collegiate Institute. From 1969 to 1972, he performed with the group Lighthouse. In 1970 he was the music director of Lorne Michaels and Hart Pomerantz's short-lived TV program The Hart & Lorne Terrific Hour. Shore wrote the music for Canadian magician Doug Henning's magical/musical Spellbound in 1974, and he was the musical director for Lorne Michaels' hugely influential late-night NBC comedy show Saturday Night Live from 1975 to 1980, appearing in many musical sketches, including Howard Shore and His 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. Shore also suggested the name for The Blues Brothers to Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.
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 (or first and second, in some cases) 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. April 24, 2008 marked the North American Live to Projection debut of Fellowship of the Ring, with the score performed live by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ludwig Wicki. Wicki also conducted the Filene Center Orchestra at the Wolf Trap Farm Park in Vienna, Virginia on May 21 and 22, 2008 in the U.S. premiere of the Fellowship of the Ring Live to Projection.
Although Shore was originally commissioned to compose the soundtrack for King Kong (indeed, he had already recorded most of the music), he was later replaced by James Newton Howard due to "differing creative aspirations for the score" on his and the filmmakers' parts. This was a mutual agreement between himself and Peter Jackson.
Despite this, Shore has a cameo near the end of King Kong as the conductor of the pit orchestra in the theater.
Shore was commissioned by Macy's to write a Fanfare for the Store's 150th anniversary featuring the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Wanamaker Organ, the world's largest playing pipe organ. The work was debuted in the Grand Court of Macy's Philadelphia Store on September 27, 2008 in a concert that drew reviews from most of the major East Coast newspapers.
Included in the soundtrack to the film "The Departed", was a version of the song "Comfortably Numb", written in part by Roger Waters. Shore later collaborated with Waters on the song "Hello, I Love You" for the soundtrack of the film "The Last Mimzy".
Shore won the 2002, 2003 and 2004 Grammy Awards for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media for his scores to The Lord of the Rings films, and the 2004 Grammy for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media for Into the West from The Return of the King.
He won back-to-back Golden Globes in 2003 and 2004 for The Return of the King and The Aviator, respectively.
