James Newton Howard

James Newton Howard (born June 9, 1951) is an American film composer, music producer and keyboardist.

He has scored over 100 films and is the recipient of a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, and nine nominations for Academy Awards.

In the early 70s, he described himself as being "dirt poor", until his big break in 1975 when his manager got him an audition with Elton John.

He joined John's band and toured with them as keyboardist during the late 70s and early 80s.

Howard also arranged strings for several of John's songs during this period including the hits "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" and "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word", and played additional keyboards and synthesizers on studio albums including Rock of the Westies (1975), Blue Moves (1976), 21 at 33 (1980), and The Fox (1981).

He was part of the band that played Central Park, New York, on September 13, 1980.

In 1982, Howard was featured on Toto IV as the strings conductor and orchestrator for "I Won't Hold You Back", "Afraid of Love", and "Lovers in the Night".

In 1983, Howard was co-producer, musician (keyboards), and orchestrator of Riccardo Cocciante's album Sincerità.

He also created five arrangements for the album "Aznavour '83" by Charles Aznavour, which was recorded in California.

In 1984 the Sheffield Lab direct-to-disc album James Newton Howard and Friends, was released, which featured Toto's David Paich (keyboards), Steve Porcaro (keyboards), Jeff Porcaro (drums), and Joe Porcaro (percussion).

In 1984, Howard composed his first piece of score for a film, receiving a co-writing credit with David Paich for the cue "Trip to Arrakis" in Toto's music for the David Lynch film Dune.

After briefly touring with Crosby, Stills, and Nash, he took an opportunity brought to him by his manager to write a score for a film.

This career move would lead to his becoming a successful film music composer.

During this early foray into film music, Howard returned for a brief collaboration with Elton John on his Tour De Force of Australia in the fall of 1986.

He conducted both his own and Paul Buckmaster's arrangements during the second half of the set, which focused on orchestrated performances of selected songs from the Elton John catalog.

Along with scoring small-scaled, independent films such as Five Corners (1988), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), and American Heart (1993), Howard proved equally skilled at composing for big-budget Hollywood spectacles, including Space Jam (1996), Dante's Peak (1997) (theme only – score was composed by John Frizzell), and Collateral (2004).

His film scores include Pretty Woman (1990), The Fugitive (1993), Space Jam (1996), Dinosaur (2000), Peter Pan (2003), King Kong (2005), Batman Begins (2005) and its sequel The Dark Knight (2008) which he composed with Hans Zimmer, The Hunger Games franchise (2012–2023), Fantastic Beasts trilogy (2016–2022), and Jungle Cruise (2021).

Howard scored the romantic comedy Pretty Woman (1990) and received his first Academy Award nomination for his score for Barbra Streisand's drama The Prince of Tides (1991).

Setting the musical mood for numerous films throughout the decade, Howard's skills encompassed a plethora of genres, including four more best original score Oscar nominations, for the Harrison Ford action feature The Fugitive (1993), the Julia Roberts romantic comedy My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), M. Night Shyamalan's The Village (2004), and Michael Clayton (2007).

In addition, Howard scored the Western epic Wyatt Earp (1994), Kevin Costner's Waterworld (1995), and Primal Fear (1996).

Although he concentrates primarily on films, Howard has also contributed music for TV, earning an Emmy nomination in 1995 for his theme to NBC's ratings smash ER (Howard also scored the two-hour pilot); he also provided the themes for The Sentinel and Gideon's Crossing, winning an Emmy for the latter.

His collaborations on songs for One Fine Day (1996) and Junior (1994) garnered Oscar nominations for Best Song.

He has collaborated extensively with directors M. Night Shyamalan and Francis Lawrence, having scored eight of Shyamalan's films since The Sixth Sense (1999) and all of Lawrence's films since I Am Legend (2007).

He has also worked with such other directors as Edward Zwick, Michael Hoffman, P.J. Hogan, Andrew Davis, Lawrence Kasdan, Joe Johnston, Taylor Hackford, Ivan Reitman, Joel Schumacher, and David Yates.

Howard was born in Los Angeles.

He is from a musical family; his grandmother was a violinist.

His father was Jewish but he did not want his children to know he was, so he changed his last name from Horowitz to Howard.

Howard began studying music as a child, taking classical piano lessons at the age of four.

He went on to attend the Thacher School in Ojai, California and the Music Academy of the West in Montecito, California with Reginald Stewart and Leon Fleischer.

He then attended the University of Southern California, studying at the School of Music as a piano performance major, but dropped out after 6 weeks because "He wanted to do other things than practicing the piano."

After Howard left college, he joined a short-lived rock band called Mama Lion.

The band was led by Neil Merryweather (bass, backing vocals) and featured lead singer Lynn Carey, Coffi Hall on drums, and Rick Gaxiola on guitar.

Mama Lion recorded two full-length albums.

Members of Mama Lion also formed the band Heavy Cruiser with Merryweather now on lead vocals, recording two albums whose genre was closer to hard rock but also displayed psychedelic and progressive influences.

He then worked for a couple of years as a session musician with artists including Diana Ross, Ringo Starr, and Harry Nilsson.

He has scored many of Shyamalan's suspense thrillers, The Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2000), Signs (2002), The Village (2004), Lady in the Water (2006), The Happening (2008), and The Last Airbender (2010), notably dropping the intense, yet subtle, opening credit music for The Sixth Sense from the corresponding soundtrack album.

He has also scored four Disney animated feature films: Dinosaur (2000), Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001), Treasure Planet (2002), and Raya and the Last Dragon (2021).

On October 14, 2005, Howard replaced Howard Shore as composer for King Kong, due to "differing creative aspirations for the score" between Shore and director Peter Jackson.

The resultant score earned Howard his first Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Score.

His work on Michael Clayton earned him an Oscar nomination.