The Career Of James Newton Howard And Film Music

However, James Newton Howard as discussed earlier came from a career that started him off in a different direction than what would be expected for a film music composer who has won as many awards as he has. Howard dropped out of college after just six weeks, preferring to work professionally as a studio musician, and then as a touring performer and arranger in Los Angeles in the 1970s, which started his writing and building his “composer toolbox”. Even with his strong professional rock background Howard studied piano at a young age, which introduced him to the stars of Western classical music. His work was impressive enough for him to pick up gigs with some of the greatest performers of the time including Ringo Starr, Carly Simon, The Pointer Sisters, Olivia …show more content…
Some of his collaborations include working with Andrew Davis on The Fugitive, Joel Schumacher on Flat-liners, Michael Hoffman on The Emperor’s Club, P.J. Hogan on Peter Pan, Lawrence Kasdan on Wyatt Earp, Ivan Reitman on Junior, and M. Night Shyamalan on many films including The Sixth Sense. During Howard’s work with Shyamalan he began to get the same viewpoint as Shyamalan as discussed earlier in film music method. Howard had this to say about his view on the use of music in film today, “I feel that film scores are terribly over spotted. There’s too much music in most movies. There’s just too much music. And most of it is terrible; most of it is not saying anything. It’s just there. And that’s really a security blanket”. Howard’s view, like that of Shyamalan, is that of building up from no music at all. Although most of Howard’s work has been done in the Rock genre for his arranging and performing Howard’s influences for his film music still comes from the traditional setting. Howard has this to say about his influence, “I’m really a product of the whole nineteenth-century romantic idiom in classical music. That 's the essence of