Howard Shore

Howard Shore stands out as a composer whose Academy Award and Grammy victories have come primarily through his contributions to fantasy epics, horror films, and thrillers. Beyond scoring, he has also produced, conducted, orchestrated, served as music director, and performed on saxophone, amassing credits that stretch back to the 1970s and encompass the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, multiple Martin Scorsese projects including The Departed and Hugo, and an enduring alliance with David Cronenberg that opened with the taut, Psycho-inspired orchestral music for The Brood in 1979 and reached their eighteenth joint effort on 2022’s Crimes of the Future.

Shore entered the world in Toronto, Canada, in 1946, began formal music lessons at eight, and was already performing in bands at thirteen. Following studies at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, he helped form the Toronto jazz-rock ensemble Lighthouse, whose self-titled debut album appeared in 1969. He contributed saxophone to six of the group’s recordings before departing in 1972. While still with Lighthouse he took on television duties, notably as music director for the brief series The Hart & Lorne Terrific Hour starring Hart Pomerantz and Lorne Michaels. In 1974 he wrote the score for Doug Henning’s musical Spellbound, which premiered in Toronto, then became the first music director for Saturday Night Live, a post he held from 1975 to 1980. His initial film assignment arrived in 1978 with the mystery I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses, also known as Drop Dead, Dearest, followed the next year by Cronenberg’s The Brood. Additional early Cronenberg scores included Scanners in 1981, Videodrome in 1983, and The Fly in 1986, setting the stage for further collaborations.

Midway through the 1980s Shore returned to Saturday Night Live in the role of music producer while also scoring lighter fare such as Martin Scorsese’s After Hours in 1985, Penny Marshall’s Big in 1988, and Susan Seidelman’s She-Devil. More characteristic of his Cronenberg work was the unsettling music he supplied for the 1991 Best Picture winner The Silence of the Lambs. Although he continued with comedies like Mrs. Doubtfire in 1993 and Ed Wood in 1994, demand grew for his contributions to taut, dramatic projects including Single White Female in 1992, Philadelphia in 1993, and David Fincher’s Se7en in 1995 and The Game in 1997. During the same decade he scored Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch, M. Butterfly, and eXistenZ.

The 2000s marked the start of Shore’s association with Peter Jackson, beginning with The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001 and continuing through The Two Towers in 2002 and The Return of the King in 2003. His work on the first installment earned both a Grammy and an Academy Award; The Return of the King brought two further Oscars—one for Best Original Score and another for Best Original Song for “Into the West,” written with Annie Lennox and Fran Walsh. Scorsese assignments from the period comprised Gangs of New York in 2002, The Aviator in 2004, and the Best Picture recipient The Departed in 2006. Cronenberg projects included Spider in 2002, A History of Violence in 2005, and Eastern Promises in 2007, while other notable scores were Fincher’s Panic Room and John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt.

In 2010 Shore added The Twilight Saga: Eclipse to his résumé, then received an Oscar nomination for Scorsese’s Hugo the following year. Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method in 2011 and Cosmopolis in 2012 preceded another Tolkien-Jackson cycle: The Hobbit’s An Unexpected Journey in 2012, The Desolation of Smaug in 2013, and The Battle of the Five Armies in 2014. Further Cronenberg work arrived with Maps to the Stars in 2014, after which Shore scored Tom McCarthy’s Best Picture winner Spotlight in 2015. Subsequent films included the World War II dramas Denial in 2016 and The Catcher Was a Spy in 2018, followed in 2019 by François Girard’s A Song of Names, for which Shore collaborated with violinist Ray Chen.

Entering a sixth decade of film scoring, Shore supplied music for the 2020 releases The Lost Prince, Pieces of a Woman, and Funny Boy. He rejoined Cronenberg for Crimes of the Future, a 2022 Palme d’Or nominee, and also scored that year’s The Pale Blue Eye, a mystery centered on a youthful Edgar Allan Poe.