Howard Shore Biography

Howard Leslie Shore (born October 18, 1946) is a Canadian Academy Award- and Grammy-winning film composer, best known for composing the scores to The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and The Silence of the Lambs.

He was born to a Jewish family in Toronto, Canada, and studied music at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. From 1969 to 1972, he performed with the group Lighthouse. In 1974, Shore wrote the music for Canadian magician Doug Henning's magical/musical "Spellbound" co-starring fledgling actress Jennifer Dale. He was the musical director for the television show Saturday Night Live from 1975 to 1980, appearing in many musical sketches including the All-Nurse Band and dressed as a beekeeper for a John Belushi/Dan Aykroyd performance of the Slim Harpo classic I'm a King Bee. He also suggested the name for the Blues Brothers to Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.

Shore has written the music for such various major film productions as The Silence of the Lambs, Mrs. Doubtfire, Philadelphia, Ed Wood, Se7en, Dogma, High Fidelity, Panic Room and The Aviator, the last of which earned him a Golden Globe. Since The Brood in 1979, he has been a consistent collaborator with David Cronenberg, scoring all his subsequent films except The Dead Zone (1983, scored by Michael Kamen). His score for Cronenberg's Naked Lunch is notable for his collaboration with famed avante-garde jazz musician Ornette Coleman, who praised Shore's work.

Although Shore was originally slated to compose the soundtrack for King Kong (indeed, he had already recorded most of the music), he was later replaced by James Newton Howard due to "differing creative aspirations for the score" on his and the filmmakers' parts. This was a mutual agreement between him and Peter Jackson.