Born in Canada and educated in Boston, Howard Shore is more recentlyh known for his soundtracks to the Lord of the Rings movies. But this isn't where he got his start. His scoring of Lord of the Rings movies is a new genre for Howard who usually does horror and mainstream movies.
Howard began his musical careeer playing the saxophone in the rock group Lighthouse. After touring with the band for a few years he got his first composing job for T.V. in Saturday Night Live. He began his big screen career alongside director David Cronenberg. At first he did low budget films such as Scanners, Videodrome, and The Brood. These films were successful considering the budget with which they were made. Due to this, they received greater funds to do such films as Dead Ringers, The Fly, and Naked Lunch. Shore's association with horror movies landed him opportunities in The Silence of the Lambs, and Seven.
Although he did not get much recognition for his work on those films, it served as an important time for his development as a composer. The genre of low-budget horror gave Howard lots of freedom for experimentation, mixing period styles and world music, and using electronic instruments. He tried different techniques to get a feel for what works best in different situations. This would be useful with the mainstream movies that he would go on to write music for. For the mainstream movies the music had more specific requirements: from family movies like Big, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Cats and Dogs to the sad but moving Philadelphia (on which Shore only contributed one track).
It was surprising when he was chosen for the Lord of the Rings tracks because the task would be far more demanding than he had ever experienced before. He was used to composing music that would be a mere backdrop to the movie but in this trilogy the music has a far more prominent position. The Fellowship of the Ring contains Celtic music and choral works and won Shore his very first Oscar. The music in The Two Towers is more powerful and dramatic than the first, 95% of which is brand new music. These movies show that Shore can perform well under difficult circumstances (each film is 3 hours with music in a large proportion of the movie). This along with the Oscar that he won has certainly strengthened Shore's reputation as a composer of music.
