Read James Cameron’s Tribute To TITANIC Composer James Horner

James Horner, Academy Award nominee for Best Music (Original Score) for the film Avatar, arrives at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, CA, on Sunday, March 7, 2010. ©A.M.P.A.S.

On Monday, composer James Horner died in a plane crash outside Santa Barbara, California. He was 61.

The Hollywood Reporter has released a tribute to James Horner by James Cameron.

“No matter how [‘Titanic’] turned out, and no one knew at that point — it could have been a dog — I knew it would be a great score.”

“I was doing a lot of thinking about James when I heard the news and I checked online. The beginning and end of his filmography are films that he did, or would have done, with me. It’s a curious bookend. We both started out on the same film in 1980, and his last listed films are the Avatar sequels, which he would have begun later this year.”

A couple of months ago, in April, they did a night at the Royal Albert Hall where the orchestra did the entire Titanic score live to the movie. James was there to take his bows. [Producer] Jon Landau and I went to London just for the concert, and we had a kind of reunion. It was emotional and I’m glad that was my last personal memory of James. They had to subtitle the film because when the orchestra was playing, you couldn’t hear the words. I thought, “This is how James would have imagined it.”

Read James Cameron’s Full Tribute to James Horner on THR here.

Stefan Pape from HeyUGuys interviewed Horner after Titanic Live where they spoke about the film and the AVATAR sequels.

Horner was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, winning two for 1997’s best picture, TITANIC. He composed the film’s score and its enduring theme song, “My Heart Will Go On,” sung by Celine Dion.

His scores for ALIENS, APOLLO 13, FIELD OF DREAMS, BRAVEHEART, A BEAUTIFUL MIND, HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG AND AVATAR also earned Oscar nods, as did his original song, “Somewhere Out There,” from AN AMERICAN TAIL.

Horner’s most recent film projects are director Jean-Jacques Annaud’s WOLF TOTEM, director Patricia Riggen’s THE 33, and director Antoine Fuqua’s SOUTHPAW.