R.I.P. James Horner

Kevin Winter/Getty

R.I.P. James Horner

Kevin Winter/Getty

Acclaimed film music composer and conductor James Horner died in a private plane crash in Southern California on Monday morning, THR reports. Horner was piloting his small plane when it went down about 60 miles north of Santa Barbara. He was 61 years old.

Horner began his career in Hollywood during the late 1970s, starting out scoring films for B-movie director/producer Roger Corman. He had a major breakthrough in 1982 thanks to his work on Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, quite possibly the best Star Trek movie, and he quickly became a well-respected and in-demand composer. The 1986 film Aliens garnered Horner his first of ten Academy Award nominations, and in 1998, he won Best Original Song for “My Heart Will Go On” and Best Original Dramatic Score for his soundtrack to Titanic, the best-selling orchestral film soundtrack of all time.

Over the course of his lengthy career, Horner scored over 100 films, including classics like An American Tail, Willow, The Land Before Time, Field Of Dreams, Braveheart, Apollo 13, and Jumanji, and he was still working on new films when he passed away. Listen to some of his work below.

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