John Powell (film composer)


John Powell is an English composer, best known for his scores in motion pictures. He has been based in Los Angeles since 1997 and has composed the scores to over fifty feature films. He is particularly known for his scores for animated films, including Antz, Chicken Run, Shrek, Robots, Happy Feet, Happy Feet Two, three Ice Age sequels, Bolt, Rio, Rio 2, and the How to Train Your Dragon film series. He has also scored many live-action films, of which his collaborations with directors Doug Liman and Paul Greengrass are perhaps the best known. These include the first three and the fifth Bourne films, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, United 93, Jumper, Green Zone and '.
His work on Happy Feet, Ferdinand and ' has earned him 3 Grammy nominations. He was nominated for an Academy Award for How to Train Your Dragon.
Powell was a member of Hans Zimmer's music studio, Remote Control Productions, and has collaborated frequently with other composers from the studio, including Harry Gregson-Williams and Zimmer himself.

Early life and education

Powell was originally trained as a violinist as a child, and played the viola as well, before studying at London's Trinity College of Music. He later ventured into jazz and rock music, playing in a soul band called the Faboulistics. After finishing 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.
Powell is an atheist.

Career

In 1995, Powell 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, going on to score all but one of subsequent films by Blue Sky Studios.
In 2006, he scored Greengrass' United 93. He also composed music for ', following David Newman, who scored the first Ice Age film, as well as ', 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, Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!, Hancock, and Bolt. In 2009 he scored the third film of Ice Age series; '.
In 2010, Powell composed the 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.
In 2013, he took a sabbatical year from film scoring. In April 2014, following the completion of his scores to sequels Rio 2 and How to Train Your Dragon 2, he announced his decision to take another break to compose concert music, including a 45-minute oratorio to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of World War I. The piece, named "A Prussian Requiem", premiered on 6 March 2016 at The Royal Festival Hall, London with José Serebrier conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra and a libretto by Michael Petry.
He composed ', which was released in May 2018.
Powell also composed How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, which released in theatres February 22, 2019 in the United States.

Discography

Television

Film

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

Studio Albums

Awards and nominations

Awards