Beacon Academy

Lore & Background

Howard was born in Los Angeles to Samuel Howard (né Horowitz) and Joan Howard (née Royall). 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. 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. He was part of the band that played Central Park, New York, on September 13, 1980. 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', along with 'Tonight' (featuring the London Symphony Orchestra). He 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). 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 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). Howard's track 'L'daddy' was used as benchmark testing in International Auto Sound Challenge Association (IASCA) SPL testing. 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, 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.

Reader's Guide

In September 2010, he was appointed visiting professor of media composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He composed the Legendary Entertainment fanfare from 2010 to 2017, and he also composed the 2011 FilmDistrict fanfare. From 2012 to 2023, James Newton Howard scored the music for the critically acclaimed The Hunger Games franchise. From 2014 to 2015, Howard saw major success with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 when he composed the score for the movie, which included 'The Hanging Tree', featuring vocals from actress Jennifer Lawrence. The song peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the highest-charting single from The Hunger Games movies and both Howard's and Lawrence's first chart single. In 2014, Howard scored two Academy Award-nominated films, Nightcrawler and Maleficent. Howard composed the score for the fantasy drama Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a spin-off/prequel of the Harry Potter film series, and for its sequels, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. In 2015, James Newton Howard was named the new artistic director of the Henry Mancini Institute (HMI) at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. On March 23–24, 2019, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra gave the world premiere of Howard's Concerto for Cello & Orchestra with LACO principal cello Andrew Shulman as the soloist. The Los Angeles Times described the work as having 'an elegiac tone, along with thematic material from the beginning and closing titles of Red Sparrow' the score of which Howard was working on while first composing the concerto. When delving into his family history, 25 years after the death of his father, Howard learned that his father was Jewish (the family's original surname was Horowitz).

Did You Know?

• Howard dropped out of USC's School of Music after only 6 weeks because he wanted to do other things than practicing the piano.
• Howard learned his father was Jewish (original surname Horowitz) 25 years after his father's death; he was raised Protestant but later became a practicing Reconstructionist Jew.