James Horner has died

Award-winning film composer James Horner has died in a plane crash.

The acclaimed American film composer, best known for his score to James Cameron’s Titanic, has died in a plane crash in California. He was 61-years-old.

Horner was piloting a small S-312 Tucano MK1 turbo-prop aircraft, when it crashed approximately 60 miles north of Santa Barbara, in the Los Padres National Forest. The composer’s assistant, Sylvia Patrycja, later confirmed the composer’s death on social media. “A great tragedy has struck my family today… We have lost an amazing person with a huge heart, and unbelievable talent,” Patrycja wrote on Facebook. “He died doing what he loved.”

One of Horner’s recently completed projects was a Brian J Terwilliger documentary on aviation, Living in the Age of Airplanes, narrated by fellow aviation enthusiast Harrison Ford. Ford himself was in a plane crash earlier this year after his vintage Ryan PT-22 suffered engine failure shortly after take-off from Santa Monica airport.

Horner’s career began in 1975 with the score for the television film The Drought. Five years later he earned his first accolade from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards for his score to Walter Hill’s 48 Hrs (1982). He went on to compose the music for 112 films, including blockbuster hits such as Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan, Aliens, Hocus Pocus and Avatar. One of his most defining creative collaborations was with the director James Cameron. Horner He was regarded as one of the most important screen composers of his generation, winning 48 of his 64 nominations including the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Original Song in 1998 for My heart will go on, which featured in Titanic (1997) and a BMI Film Music Award for Avatar (2010).