After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
-Aldous Huxley
A Composer's Dream
Barbara Willis Sweete, Director, Gerry Flahive, Producer
A founding partner of Rhombus Media, Barbara Willis Sweete has produced and directed more than 30 films since the company’s inception in 1979. Her films have earned dozens of awards and nominations, including Genies, Geminis, and International Emmys, and three Grammy nominations. Barbara also directs live Metropolitan Opera broadcasts and recently directed a CBC adaptation of Billy Bishop Goes to War.
Howard Shore
2011 Lifetime Artistic Achievement (Screens and Voices (formerly Broadcasting and Film))
Composer and musician
Howard Shore is among today’s most respected, honoured, and active composers and music conductors. His work with director Peter Jackson on The Lord of the Rings film trilogy stands as his most towering achievement to date, earning him three Academy Awards. He has also received four Grammy and three Golden Globe awards. Mr. Shore was one of the original creators of Saturday Night Live and served as the music director on the show from 1975 to 1980. At the same time, he began collaborating with David Cronenberg and has scored 13 of the director’s films, including The Fly, Crash, and Naked Lunch. His original scores to Dead Ringers and Eastern Promises were each honoured with a Genie Award. Mr. Shore continues to distinguish himself with a wide range of projects, from Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, The Aviator and Gangs of New York to Ed Wood, The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, and Mrs. Doubtfire.
Mr. Shore’s music has been performed in concerts throughout the world. In 2003, he conducted the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in the world premiere of The Lord of the Rings Symphony in Wellington, New Zealand. Since then, the work has had over 140 performances by the world’s most prestigious orchestras.
In 2008, Howard Shore’s opera The Fly premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and at Los Angeles Opera. Other recent works include Fanfare for the Wanamaker Organ in Philadelphia and the piano concerto Ruin and Memory for Lang Lang, premiered in Beijing, China in 2010. He is currently working on his second opera and looks forward to a return to Middle-earth with J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
Awards and honours include the Career Achievement for Music Composition Award from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, New York Chapter’s Recording Academy Honors, ASCAP’s Henry Mancini Award, the Frederick Loewe Award, and the Max Steiner Award from the city of Vienna. He holds honorary doctorates from Berklee College of Music and York University and he is an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la France.