Sad Loss to the Film Industry of Composer James Horner
Two-time Oscar winner, James Roy Horner, has died on Monday in a plane crash in California at the age of 61. Officials found that Horner was piloting a single-engine S312 Tucano turboprop plane when it crashed into a remote area about 60 miles north of Santa Barbara.
Born on August 14 in 1953, the American composer, conductor, and orchestrator of film music is noted for the integration of choral and electronic elements in many of his film scores. Before writing his first film scores, Horner was an accomplished concert hall composer; his first concert work in over 30 years came with Pas De Deux though, and featured Norwegian duo Mari & Hakon Samuelsen.
Horner has won two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, three Satellite Awards, three Saturn Awards, and has been nominated for three British Academy Film Awards. Horner has scored over 100 films, where his first major film score was for the 1979 film The Lady in Red. However, he did not establish himself as a mainstream composer until he worked on the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Horner’s score for Titanic is the best selling orchestral film soundtrack of all time, along with Avatar, which are both directed by James Cameron and are the two highest-grossing films. Other films worked on by Horner include Jumanji (1995), How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), Troy (2004) and The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), also collaborating on multiple times with directors Jean-Jacques Annaud, Mel Gibson, Walter Hill, Ron Howard and Joe Johnston.
Horner has three films yet to be released, including Southpaw, a boxing drama starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Rachel McAdams, due in theaters in July; Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Wolf Totem, to be released in September; and The 33, a drama based on the 2010 mining disaster in Chile that is set for November.
Many tributes are flowing in to the sad loss of one of the most respected composers of Hollywood.
