Howard Shore

Howard Leslie Shore (born October 18, 1946) is a Canadian composer, conductor and orchestrator noted for his film scores.

He has composed the scores for over 80 films, most notably the scores for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film trilogies.

He won three Academy Awards for his work on The Lord of the Rings, with one being for the song "Into the West", an award he shared with Eurythmics lead vocalist Annie Lennox and writer/producer Fran Walsh, who wrote the lyrics.

From 1969 to 1972, Shore was a member of the jazz fusion band Lighthouse.

In 1970, he became the music director for 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 magic musical Spellbound in 1974 and, from 1975 to 1980, he was the musical director for Michaels' influential late-night NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, appearing in many musical sketches, including Howard Shore and His All-Nurse Band, and dressed as a beekeeper for a Dan Aykroyd/John Belushi performance of the Slim Harpo classic "I'm a King Bee".

Shore also suggested the name for The Blues Brothers to Aykroyd and Belushi.

Shore has also composed for television, including serving as the original musical director for the American sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live from 1975 to 1980.

In addition to his three Academy Awards, Shore has also won three Golden Globe Awards and four Grammy Awards.

Shore was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the son of Bernice (née Ash) and Mac Shore.

Shore is Jewish.

He started studying music at the age of 8 or 9.

He learned a multitude of instruments and began playing in bands at the ages of 13 and 14.

When Shore was 13, he met and became good friends with a young Lorne Michaels in summer camp, and this friendship would later be influential in his career.

By 17, he decided he wanted to pursue music in his adult life too.

He studied music at Berklee College of Music in Boston after graduating from Forest Hill Collegiate Institute.

Shore's first film score was to the low budget thriller I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses (1978), followed by David Cronenberg's first major film, The Brood (1979).

He is a consistent collaborator with director David Cronenberg, having scored all but one of his films since 1979, and collaborated with Martin Scorsese on six of his films.

He would go on to score all of Cronenberg's subsequent films, with the exception of The Dead Zone (1983), which was scored by Michael Kamen.

The first film he scored that was not directed by Cronenberg was Martin Scorsese's After Hours (1985).

Following that, he scored The Fly (1986), again directed by Cronenberg.

Two years later, he composed the score to Big (1988), directed by Penny Marshall and starring Tom Hanks.

He then scored two more of David Cronenberg's films: Dead Ringers (1988) and Naked Lunch (1991).

During 1991, Shore composed the score for the highly acclaimed film The Silence of the Lambs, starring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins, and directed by Jonathan Demme.

He received his first BAFTA nomination for the score.

The film became the third (and most recent) to win the five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Actress).

Shore is the only living composer to have scored a "Top Five" Oscar-winning film.

During 1993, he composed the scores for M. Butterfly (another collaboration with Cronenberg), Philadelphia (his second collaboration with Jonathan Demme), and Mrs. Doubtfire, directed by Chris Columbus.

The latter two films were highly successful, Philadelphia winning Tom Hanks his first Oscar.

Shore scored another three films in 1994: The Client, Ed Wood, and Nobody's Fool.

Ed Wood is notable for being one of the three films directed by Tim Burton that did not feature a score by Danny Elfman.

Shore continued to score numerous films from 1995 to 2001, including two David Fincher films, Seven (1995) and The Game (1997), and The Truth About Cats and Dogs (1996), directed by Michael Lehmann; he also collaborated on two films with Cronenberg, along with Tom Hanks' directorial debut, That Thing You Do!.

He scored Kevin Smith’s Dogma (1999).

Shore also composed the score of the 2000 film The Cell.

Major success came in 2001 with his score to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the first film in the highly acclaimed The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The news that Shore would score the trilogy surprised some, since he was primarily associated with dark, ominous films and had never scored an epic of this scale.

Yet, the score was hugely successful and won Shore his first Oscar, as well as a Grammy Award, and garnered Shore nominations for a Golden Globe and a BAFTA.

The following year, Shore composed the scores to Panic Room, Gangs of New York (replacing Elmer Bernstein), and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the second film in the trilogy.

(The latter two films were both nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.) Initially, Shore's score for The Two Towers was going to be deemed ineligible for submission to the academy, due to a new rule disallowing the submission of scores which contained themes from previous work.

Shore has also composed a few concert works including one opera, The Fly, based on the plot of Cronenberg's 1986 film, which premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on July 2, 2008; a short piece named Fanfare for the Wanamaker Organ and the Philadelphia Orchestra; and a short overture for the Swiss 21st Century Symphony Orchestra.