John Powell

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John Powell
Background information
Born	18 September 1963 (1963-09-18) (age 46)
Origin	London, England
Genres	Film scores
Occupations	Composer, Conductor, Music producer
Instruments	Piano, Violin
Years active	1990-present

John Powell (born 18 September 1963) is an English film score composer, based in Los Angeles.

Life and career

Powell originally trained as a violinist as a child, before studying at London's Trinity College of Music. He later ventured into jazz and rock music, playing in a soul band "The Fabulistics". On leaving college, he composed music for commercials, which led to a job as an assistant to the composer Patrick Doyle on several film productions, including Much Ado About Nothing.

In 1995, he co-founded the London-based commercial music house Independently Thinking Music, which produced scores for more than 100 British and French commercials and independent films.

Notable films scored by Powell

Since moving to the U.S. in 1997, he has scored a number of comedy and action films, including Robots, The Italian Job, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Shrek, Chicken Run (co-composed with Harry Gregson-Williams), Endurance, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Jumper, Face/Off, Bolt and Horton Hears a Who!.

Powell's additional credits include Drumline, X-Men: The Last Stand, United 93, and Happy Feet, for which he received the first ever Film & TV Music Award for Best Score for an Animated Feature Film. He is one of the best known former members of the Remote Control (formerly known as Media Ventures) team of film composers and has a scoring style that incorporates both traditional orchestral and more modern, synthesized elements. A good example of this is his opening cue for the Sean Penn film, I Am Sam, which features found sounds (for example, cups scraping on tabletops, and the percussive sounds of cutlery being laid) as part of the music.

Discography

Cultural references

• Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. Solid State Society's composer, Yoko Kanno, used The Bourne Identity's theme track for the film.
• The Bourne Identity's track "Escape from Embassy" is used in the trailer for Timeline.

External links

• The Unofficial John Powell Website
• John Powell at the Internet Movie Database
• SoundtrackNet - John Powell Biography

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