Oscar-Nominated Composer John Powell To Receive Highest Honor From ASCAP With Mancini Award

John Powell is confirmed to be the recipient of the top ASCAP honor. He will receive the Mancini Award on May 23 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills.

The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers made the announcement last week.

Powell is an Oscar-nominated composer for his score on How to Train Your Dragon in 2010. He also created some of the songs in the four Bourne movies, which starred Matt Damon.

Most recently, he scored for the animated film Ferdinand. Powell is currently working on Solo: A Star Wars Story.

John Powell Talks About His Career

In 2014, Powell sat down for an interview with The Independent, where he talked about the first Bourne movie from 2002. He said that he landed the role of music scorer by mistake.

"They had already spent money on a big orchestra, and the soundtrack was good. It just wasn't what [director] Doug [Liman] was looking for. He wanted something he hadn't heard before. Everybody else was doing big, so I decided to do small. For budgetary reasons, my score started without an orchestra at all. We stuck some strings on top at the end to give it a cinematic feel. Everything was sort of an accident," explained Powell.

The composer also dished on the upside and downside of working as a film composer.

"The great thing about being a film composer is that production companies give me incredible musicians and facilities that would be very hard to get otherwise. And they pay me to do it. The downside is that the musician has to fit the film... You have to sell yourself to the devil, a little bit," said Powell.

Who Is John Powell?

Powell is an English composer, who moved to Los Angeles in 1997. He also scored for Antz, Chicken Run, Shrek, Robots, Happy Feet, Ice Age, Rio, and more.

The composer is a member of Hans Zimmer's music studio Remote Control Productions. He has collaborated with the other composers from the same studio like Zimmer and Harry Gregson-Williams.

As a young boy, Powell was trained as a violinist. He later went to Trinity College of Music, where he ventured into jazz and rock music. He previously played in the band Faboulistics.

After leaving school, he started composing music for television commercials. It paved the way for Powell to land a job as an assistant composer to Patrick Doyle.

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