Born Howard Leslie Shore on the 18th October 1946 in Toronto, Ontario Canada, he is a composer and conductor best known for film scores. So far he has composed music for more than 80 films, including ‘Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” trilogies, and for the majority of David Cronenberg films. His career started in the late ‘70s.
Have you ever wondered how rich Howard Shore is, as of early 2017? According to authoritative sources, it has been estimated that Shore’s net worth is as high as $10 million, an amount earned through his long and distinguished musical career.
Howard Shore Net Worth $10 Million
Howard is of Jewish ancestry, the son of Bernice and Mac Shore. From an early age he was interested in music, and he soon learnt to play several instruments. As he got older, his focus on music increased and by the age of 14 he was already a part of several bands. When he was 13 years old, he met and befriended Lorne Michaels, who later became a famous television producer, best known to the world as creator of the variety show “Saturday Night Live”. Howard’s friendship with Lorne was then put to good use, as he created the original theme song and the closing theme for the aforementioned show.
After high school he attended Forest Hill Collegiate Institute, after which he enrolled at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.
In the late ‘60s, he joined the jazz fusion band Lighthouse, and stayed in the band until 1972. In 1970 he began collaborating with Lorne Michaels, firstly on the show “The Hart & Lorne Terrific Hour”, which was collaboration with Hart Pomerantz, and then moved on to “Saturday Night Live”. This engagement really boosted Howard’s career, and soon he was composing music for films. His first accomplishment was the score for the thriller film “I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses (Drop Dead, Dearest)” in 1978, starring Elke Sommer, Donald Pilon and Chuck Shamata. After that he struck-up a friendship with director David Cronenberg who used him from all his films from 1979 until the present day, except for “The Dead Zone” (1983). Some of the most successful films with Cronenberg include the action horror “Scanners” (1981), sci-fi horror “The Fly” (1986), thriller horror “Dead Ringers” (1988), the drama “Naked Lunch” (1991, “A History of Violence” (2005), and most recently “Cosmopolis” in 2012. All contributed steadily to Howard’s net worth.
Thanks to the success of Cronenberg’s films in the ‘80s, Howard’s talent was recognized by several other notable directors, and throughout the next decade Howard composed music for numerous successful films, which increased his net worth to a large degree. Some of the directors he worked with include Chris Columbus, Tim Burton, Jonathan Demme, Joel Schumacher, David Fincher, Robert Benton and Tom Hanks as well, while the films included are “Mrs. Doubtfire” (1993), starring Robin Williams, Sally Field and Pierce Brosnan, “Philadelphia” (1993), “The Client” (1994), “Ed Wood” (1994), “Se7en” (1995), starring Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, and Kevin Spacey, and “The Game” (1997), among many others.
Howard started the new millennium successfully, composing the music for Peter Jackson’s fantasy adventure “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring”, based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolien. After the film became a complete success, two more films followed, and Howard was again the lead composer for the next two installments – “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” (2002), and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” in 2003, receiving Academy Awards and one Golden Globe award for his compositions. Later, Howard and Jackson collaborated again, this time on another Tolkien’s novel-based trilogy “The Hobbit”, which further added to Howard’s net worth.
During the 2000s, Howard also worked on such films as Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” in 2002, with Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, and Daniel Day-Lewis, then the biopic about Howard Hughes – “Aviator” – in 2004, for which he won a Golden Globe Award. The film’s director was once again Martin Scorsese, and the two worked on several more films in the 2000s and 2010s, such as the Academy Award-winning crime thriller “The Departed” (2006), and Academy Award-winning adventure “Hugo” (2011). In recent years, he worked on Tom McCarthy’s Academy Award-winning crime drama “Spotlight” in 2015, with Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton and Rachel McAdams, and Mick Jackson’s drama “Denial” (2016).
Howard is also an accomplished conductor; starting in 2004 he has toured across the world, performing the “Lord of the Rings: Symphony in Six Movements” with local orchestras. In 2010 he was the conductor of the RSO Vienna (Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra), while back in 2008 he showcased the opera “The Fly”, premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.
Thanks to the successful career, Howard has received numerous awards and accolades. Apart from Academy Awards and Golden Globes, he has received four Grammy Awards, while in 2008 he was presented with an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music. Most recently he was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada
Regarding his personal life, Howard has been married to Elizabeth Cotnoir since 1990; the couple has one child together.
