Reports from the USA suggest that James Horner, composer of Avatar, Titanic, Aliens and the Star Trek movies 2 and 3 has died in a plane crash in Ventura County, California. While not my favourite film composer (stories of his somewhat cold disrespect to film composers and even recording staff abound) this is still something of a shock to me considering that Horner remained a major force in film music up to this point and was approaching a firm return to film composing after easing down on assignments to do composing for concerts and personal works.
From a fanboy point of view, I still have a fondness for early stuff like Brainstorm, his Star Trek scores and, of course, Aliens. His prolific output around the 80s was as good as they come and formed the bedrock of his success, with one year seeing him compose music for ten films in that period. Busy man, and successful, too. He still divided opinion in some quarters due to his penchant of regurgitating pieces of music from his earlier scores into his new ones, but his place in film music and the following it built is unarguable.
RIP.
From a fanboy point of view, I still have a fondness for early stuff like Brainstorm, his Star Trek scores and, of course, Aliens. His prolific output around the 80s was as good as they come and formed the bedrock of his success, with one year seeing him compose music for ten films in that period. Busy man, and successful, too. He still divided opinion in some quarters due to his penchant of regurgitating pieces of music from his earlier scores into his new ones, but his place in film music and the following it built is unarguable.
RIP.
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