James Horner, one of Hollywood's most prolific and acclaimed film composers, died on Monday when a small plane he was piloting crashed in California's Los Padres National Forest. Horner, 61, was the only passenger in the plane.
In honor of James Horner, we are currently dedicating our entire movie music stream on YourClassical to his compositions.
Horner wrote music for over 100 films and won two Academy Awards—both for the wildly popular 1997 film Titanic—in addition to eight additional Oscar nominations and many other honors, including five Grammys.
In addition to Titanic, to which he contributed both the instrumental score and the music for the song "My Heart Will Go On," Horner was best-known for Braveheart (1995) and Avatar (2009). His gift for heart-tugging melodies made him a go-to composer for filmmakers like James Cameron (Aliens, Titanic, Avatar) and Ron Howard (Cocoon, Apollo 13).
James Horner was born in Los Angeles on August 14, 1953. He studied at the Royal College of Music, USC, and UCLA, and first achieved prominence as a film composer with his score for 1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. While science fiction and fantasy have remained specialties of Horner's, he has scored films as diverse as the baseball movie Field of Dreams (1989), the thriller Patriot Games (1992), and the literary biopic Iris (2001).
Astonishingly prolific, Horner was responsible for the scores of as many as 11 feature films released in a single year. With Titanic, he earned a further distinction as the composer of the all-time best-selling orchestral soundtrack.
The cause of the crash of Horner's plane is not yet known. He is survived by his wife and their two daughters.
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