John Powell
John Powell (born 18 September 1963) is an English composer and conductor, best known for his scores to motion pictures. After studying at London's Trinity College of Music, Powell rose to fame in the late 1990s and 2000s, scoring numerous animated films, in addition to his live-action collaborations with directors Doug Liman and Paul Greengrass. He has been based in Los Angeles since 1997 and has composed the scores to over fifty feature films. His 2010 score for the film How to Train Your Dragon earned him his first Academy Award nomination at the 83rd Academy Awards. He was a member of Hans ...read more
John Powell (born 18 September 1963) is an English composer and conductor, best known for his scores to motion pictures. After studying at London's Trinity College of Music, Powell rose to fame in the late 1990s and 2000s, scoring numerous animated films, in addition to his live-action collaborations with directors Doug Liman and Paul Greengrass. He has been based in Los Angeles since 1997 and has composed the scores to over fifty feature films. His 2010 score for the film How to Train Your Dragon earned him his first Academy Award nomination at the 83rd Academy Awards. He was a member of Hans Zimmer's music studio, Remote Control Productions, and collaborated frequently with other composers from the studio, including Harry Gregson-Williams and Zimmer himself.
Powell was born in London. He originally trained as a violinist as a child, before studying at London's Trinity College of Music. He later ventured into jazz and rock music, playing in a soul band the Faboulistics. On leaving college, he composed music for commercials, which led to a job as an assistant to the composer Patrick Doyle on several film productions, including Much Ado About Nothing.
In 1995, he co-founded the London-based commercial music house Independently Thinking Music, which produced scores for more than 100 British and French commercials and independent films.
Powell's first film score was for the 1990 film Stay Lucky. He moved to Los Angeles in 1997, and scored his first major film, Face/Off. This was followed by Antz in 1998, the first film produced by DreamWorks Animation which he co-scored with fellow British composer Harry Gregson-Williams. Two years later the two collaborated again to compose the score to Chicken Run, and again the following year on Shrek, which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. All subsequent Shrek films however, have been scored solely by Gregson-Williams. During 2001 he also scored Evolution, I Am Sam, Just Visiting, and Rat Race.
In 2002 Powell was hired to score The Bourne Identity, after Carter Burwell left the project, and has gone on to score all of director Doug Liman's subsequent films. He also returned to score the other two films in the series; The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, which were both directed by British director Paul Greengrass.
Following the Bourne films, Powell collaborated with Liman again to score the 2005 film Mr. & Mrs. Smith. That year, he also scored Robots.
In 2006, he scored Greengrass' United 93. He also composed music for Ice Age: The Meltdown, following David Newman, who scored the first Ice Age film, as well as X-Men: The Last Stand, and Happy Feet, for which he won a Film & TV Music Award for Best Score for an Animated Feature Film. The following year he scored The Bourne Ultimatum. In 2008 he collaborated with composer Hans Zimmer to score Kung Fu Panda, and also wrote music that year for Jumper, Hancock, and Bolt. In 2009 he scored the third film of Ice Age series; Dawn of the Dinosaurs.
In 2010, Powell composed the score to How to Train Your Dragon. This was his sixth score for a DreamWorks Animation film, although the first where he composed the whole score himself. It also became his first work to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score. That year, he has also scored Greengrass's Green Zone, and Knight and Day.
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