Celebrity Biographies
James Horner
James Horner, composer who won two Oscars for the “Titanic” soundtrack, died in a plane crash in Santa Barbara, California, on June 22, 2015, at the age of 61. He was flying a small airplane alone, but it suffered a breakdown that caused him to collapse in the town of Ventucopa. He had composed a hundred scores for well-known movies.
Born on August 14, 1953, in Los Angeles, James Roy Horner was the son of Joan and production designer and filmmaker Harry Horner, both Austrian emigrants.
Exceptional talent for music, at the age of 5 he already played the piano, and soon after he traveled to London, where he studied at the Royal College of Music. He earned a Master of Music degree from the University of Southern California. After various odd jobs with the American Film Institute in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he taught music theory at UCLA, but soon realized that film music was his thing.
His first important works were the action film The Lady in Red , and the science fiction adventure film The Magnificent 7 from Space . Next, he wrote an exceptional score for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , one of the most memorable pieces of music in the galactic saga.
In the 80s he adopted a style clearly indebted to John Williams , in really memorable works such as Limit: 48 hours , Krull, Commando , Fievel and the new world , Aliens: the return , Field of dreams and above all in the inspired notes of Willow . Many of his compositions are regularly used for movie trailers to which other authors later put music.
In the 1990s, James Horner left behind works like Braveheart and Apollo 13 , for which he won Oscar nominations. However, his greatest success was Titanic , which in addition to winning him the Academy Award, sold 27 million records. He worked two years on the ‘score’ of Avatar , the next work of James Cameron .
Not only did he work with the big names, he also put his talent at the service of small productions such as Radio , Iris , Cristiada or Casa de arena y niebla . Sometimes he has been quite reviled by critics, for his habitual “parabará” and for copying himself, for example Bicentennial Man is almost indistinguishable from A Beautiful Mind , but he had a very personal style, marked by features such as emphasis of action based on drums, or by the use of synthesizers. His last work was the soundtrack for The 33 , reconstruction of the tragedy of the miners in Chile, with Antonio Banderas. The details of his personal life are unknown.