Howard Shore

Composer Howard Shore is responsible for some of cinema’s most immersive musical moments, including the uneasy main title of 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs and the haunting, fantastical orchestral flourishes of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Born in 1946 in Toronto, Shore built on a childhood love of music by studying at the Berklee College of Music. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, he was in the horn section of the Canadian rock band Lighthouse, and he later served as the first musical director of Saturday Night Live. In 1979, he began a long-lasting relationship with director David Cronenberg, scoring The Brood. However, Shore’s eclectic musical background has allowed him to compose music for an equally eclectic mix of films and directors. Accordingly, his work spans the keyboard-heavy, suspense-filled cues for Martin Scorsese’s After Hours; the carnivalesque whimsy of Penny Marshall’s Big; and the sombre, string-heavy introspection of Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia. In an extension of his film-music career, Shore adapted his Lord of the Rings score into The Lord of the Rings Symphony, which he has also conducted during live orchestral performances.