John Powell

The Bourne series. Kung Fu Panda. Wicked. How to Train Your Dragon.

What do these varied films have in common?

The composer of their scores: John Powell.

Born in England in 1963, Trinity Laban alum and Honorary Fellow John Powell first picked up the violin when he was seven. Playing as a child in the East Sussex Youth Orchestra, he cites one of his earliest musical memories as the opening of Stravinsky’s The Firebird. “To this day, it still gives me shudders when I hear it […] I sometimes wonder if I’ve spent my whole career trying to get back to the feeling of that first rush, the excitement of something utterly new,” he told blank magazine.

John studied violin and composition at Trinity College of Music (now Trinity Laban), graduating in 1986. During his time at conservatoire, he met his long-term collaborator, fellow alum and Honorary Fellow Gavin Greenaway, who has conducted many of his scores including How To Train Your Dragon 2 and Solo: A Star Wars Story.

“Conservatoires are about the people that you are with during your studies and the influence they have on you. I was able to make a lot of music during my time here. I loved the fact that I was given the space to create,” John told Trinity Laban.

Upon completing his undergraduate degree, John worked as an assistant engineer at Sir George Martin’s studio, partnered with Gavin in a performance-art group, and co-founded the London-based production music house “Independently Thinking Music” with Gavin. This company produced music for over 100 commercials and independent films.

It was Hans Zimmer who first spotted John’s potential for film music. They met in London in the 1980s, before John moved to the US and assisted composers including Patrick Doyle (Much Ado About Nothing). They’ve worked together on a variety of epic scores since then, including Kung Fu Panda and Chill Factor. John moved from UK commercials and television to the epicenter of film music in Los Angeles in 1997, joining Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions and becoming a renowned figure in modern animation and action film scores. The composer’s brilliant and wide-ranging scores have seen him earn multiple nominations for Oscars and Grammy awards, as well as wins in the Ivor Novello Awards, Annie Awards, and World Soundtrack Awards.

Commenting on John’s composition style, his collaborator and fellow alum Gavin reflected that “over the years, John has developed a most unique orchestral style: very strong on melody and harmony, with clever use of rhythm, percussion, and synthetic textures along with idiosyncratic, but nevertheless effective, orchestration – for instance, his fiendishly difficult trumpet parts.”