Howard Shore
Howard Shore’s scores for the three films in The Lord of the Rings trilogy are among the most celebrated and popular in movie history, garnering four Grammy Awards and three Oscars as well as honors and awards from leading critic associations. The UK’s Classic FM radio voted The Lord of the Rings soundtracks the Best Film Score of All Time for two consecutive years and the soundtracks for The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King have sold more than six million albums worldwide since their releases in 2001, 2002 and 2003 respectively.
Shore’s most recent collaboration with Martin Scorsese, The Aviator, won a Golden Globe and Critic’s Choice award for Best Original Score and was nominated for a Grammy. His other scores include The Silence Of The Lambs and Philadelphia, directed by Jonathan Demme; Ed Wood, directed by Tim Burton; Seven, The Game and Panic Room, all directed by David Fincher; and both Gangs of New York and After Hours, directed by Martin Scorsese. Shore’s longstanding collaboration with David Cronenberg has produced the scores to eleven films, including The Fly (1986), Dead Ringers (1988), Naked Lunch (1990), M. Butterfly (1993), Crash (1996), and A History of Violence (2005) and, most recently, the widely acclaimed Eastern Promises (2007). Shore received the 2005 Career Achievement for Music Composition Award from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.
Shore’s music has been performed in concerts throughout the world. He has conducted concerts of his original music in Seville (at the Seville Film Music Festival); Melbourne (at Cinesonic’s First International Conference on Film Scores and Sound Design); and Ottawa, at the National Arts Centre. Shore conducted the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in the world premiere of his work, The Lord of the Rings Symphony: Six Movements for Orchestra and Chorus, in Wellington, New Zealand, in November 2003. Since then, the work has been performed by some of the world’s most prestigious orchestras and in such famous venues as Moscow’s Kremlin Palace Theater, the Odeon Herod Atticus in Athens and London’s Royal Albert Hall. The first two movements of the work received their New York premiere at Carnegie Hall in November 2005, followed by sold out performances of the complete symphony by the Cleveland Orchestra in February. The performances of The Lord of the Rings Symphony by the San Francisco Symphony in July 2006 will include the 100th performance of the work to date. His opera based on The Fly, his film collaboration with David Cronenberg, commissioned for the Los Angeles Opera, will have its world premiere in Paris in 2007, followed by its U.S. premiere in Los Angeles.
In addition to the recordings of his film score work, Mr. Shore’s chamber music has been featured on an Arabesque Records CD entitled Reel Life – The Private Music of Film Composers, Vol. 1.
Howard Shore lives in New York with his wife Elizabeth.