John Powell (born 18 September 1963) is an English composer and conductor of film scores. Based in Los Angeles since 1997, he has composed music for over 70 feature films including Face/Off, I Am Sam, the Bourne franchise, The Italian Job, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, X-Men: The Last Stand, Hancock, Pan, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Don't Worry Darling, Wicked and its sequel Wicked: For Good, ten DreamWorks Animation films, eight Blue Sky Studios films, and three Illumination films.
Powell's work on Happy Feet, Ferdinand, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Wicked, and the live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon earned him six Grammy Award nominations. Additionally, he earned two Academy Award for Best Original Score nominations for the original How to Train Your Dragon and Wicked.
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 on Antz, Chicken Run, and Shrek in addition to Zimmer himself on Chill Factor, The Road to El Dorado, and the first two Kung Fu Panda movies. He also collaborated with film directors Carlos Saldanha, Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders, Jon M. Chu, George Miller, John Woo, Ron Underwood, Doug Liman, Charles Stone III and Paul Greengrass.
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Early life and education
Powell was born in London. As a child, he played the violin and viola. He studied the violin at Trinity College of Music in central London (now Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in Greenwich). There, he met John Ashton Thomas, who orchestrated many of Powell's scores. Powell played for Faboulistics, an amateur rock and roll band.
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. In 1995, Powell along with Gavin Greenaway founded Thinking Music, an independent commercial music house which has produced scores for more than 100 British and French commercials and independent films.
Career
Powell's first score was for Season 4 of the TV series Stay Lucky. He moved to Los Angeles in 1997 and scored his first major film, Face/Off. It was followed by Antz in 1998, the first film produced by DreamWorks Animation. He and fellow British composer Harry Gregson-Williams scored it, marking the duo's first score for an animated film. In 2000, Powell collaborated with Zimmer on the score for The Road to El Dorado. Later in 2000, he teamed with Gregson-Williams again to compose the score to Chicken Run and then again on Shrek in 2001. Gregson-Williams composed all of the subsequent Shrek films and the sequel to Chicken Run. In 2001 Powell scored Evolution, I Am Sam, Just Visiting and Rat Race.
In 2002 Powell was hired to score The Bourne Identity for director Liman after Carter Burwell left the project. Powell returned to score the series' other two films, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, under Greengrass, a British director. Powell collaborated with Liman again to score Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). In 2005 he also scored Robots for Blue Sky Studios and scored many of the studio's subsequent films until 2017's Ferdinand.
In 2006, he scored Greengrass' United 93. He composed music for his second Blue Sky film Ice Age: The Meltdown, after 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. In 2007, he scored The Bourne Ultimatum. In 2008 he and Zimmer worked together again, scoring Kung Fu Panda for Dream Works Animation and Powell wrote music for Jumper, Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!, 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, earning a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Score. It was his sixth DreamWorks Animation film, although the first time he composed an entire score himself. In 2010, he scored Greengrass' Green Zone and Knight and Day. In 2013, Powell took a sabbatical year from film scoring. In April 2014, after completing his scores to sequels Rio 2 and How to Train Your Dragon 2, he announced he would take another break to compose concert music, including a 45-minute oratorio to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of World War I. The piece, "A Prussian Requiem", with a libretto by Michael Petry, premiered on March 6, 2016 at The Royal Festival Hall in London with José Serebrier conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra.