MOVIE MUSIC UK

Composer, conductor and musician Nick Glennie-Smith died on August 17, 2026, at his home in Los Angeles after a period of ill-health. He was 74 years old.

One of the key figures in the development of the modern Hollywood action score, Glennie-Smith enjoyed a career spanning pop music, film, television and live performance. He was best known for The Rock, The Man in the Iron Mask, We Were Soldiers and Secretariat, as well as for his decades-long association with Hans Zimmer as composer, conductor and musical director.

Nicholas Glennie-Smith was born in London, England, on October 3, 1951. He began his professional career as a keyboard player, joining the progressive-rock group Wally in the 1970s and later performing or recording with artists including Leo Sayer, Cliff Richard, Roger Daltrey and Paul McCartney. He also worked with Roger Waters on When the Wind Blows and Radio K.A.O.S., and performed at Waters’s enormous 1990 production of The Wall in Berlin.

During the late 1980s Glennie-Smith became associated with Stanley Myers, and then subsequently with Hans Zimmer’s Media Ventures studio, which saw him relocate from the UK to Los Angeles. Initially he contributed additional music, conducting, keyboard performances, arrangements and orchestrations to films including K2, Cool Runnings, The House of the Spirits, The Lion King, Bad Boys, Crimson Tide and Beyond Rangoon. His combination of orchestral technique, electronic programming and practical experience as a performing musician made him particularly suited to the rapidly developing Media Ventures sound.

His breakthrough came with Michael Bay’s The Rock (1996), on which Glennie-Smith, Zimmer and Harry Gregson-Williams shared principal composing duties. The score’s pounding percussion, massed brass, synthesizers and broad heroic themes became hugely influential on Hollywood action music of the following decade and established Glennie-Smith as a composer in his own right.

He followed with Fire Down Below and Home Alone 3 in 1997 before writing one of his finest scores for Randall Wallace’s The Man in the Iron Mask (1998). Its sweeping themes, large orchestra and mixture of romance, tragedy and adventure gave Glennie-Smith an opportunity to work on a grand symphonic scale. The same year he scored Disney’s The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride, revealing a warmer and more lyrical side of his musical personality.

Wallace reunited with Glennie-Smith for We Were Soldiers (2002), perhaps the composer’s most emotionally powerful score. Written for orchestra, chorus and distinctive ethnic instruments, the music combined martial intensity with elegiac writing for the soldiers and their families. Glennie-Smith later worked with Wallace again on Heaven Is for Real (2014).

Other major assignments included Highlander: Endgame (2000), the television epic Attila (2001), Ella Enchanted (2004), A Sound of Thunder (2005), the Hungarian historical drama Children of Glory (2006) and Disney’s Secretariat (2010). He also composed extensively for the French historical theme park Puy du Fou, developing large-scale music for several of its spectacular productions.

Glennie-Smith remained equally important behind the podium. He conducted scores for films including the Pirates of the Caribbean and Transformers series, The Simpsons Movie, X-Men: First Class, Rango and numerous other productions associated with Zimmer and his collaborators. In 2012 he conducted the orchestra for the Academy Awards ceremony, and later served as musical director for Hans Zimmer’s enormously successful live concerts.

Glennie-Smith was married to his wife Jan for more than three decades, and the couple had four children. His son, Seth Glennie-Smith, is also a music editor and composer.