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James Thatcher is a musician, specialized in playing the French Horn, who worked for Dennis McCarthy, Ron Jones, and Jerry Goldsmith on episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and two Star Trek films.

Thatcher has been the lead French horn player for composers such as John Williams, James Newton Howard, James Horner, Steve Jablonsky, Hans Zimmer, Brian Tyler, and Alan Silvestri. His brother George Thatcher is also a musician, performing the bass trombone on several film soundtracks [1] [2] and his sister Jan Chamberlin is a singer and vocal coach. [3]

Thatcher himself has started his career at the age of 16, performing and studying with his uncle George Thatcher, former principal hornist with the National Symphony of Mexico. He has been a member of the Phoenix Symphony, the Utah Symphony, the Pacific Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic and is currently principal horn of the Pasadena Symphony, the New West Symphony and the Los Angeles Music Center Opera.

He received the Most Valuable Player Award from the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences as the most often heard horn player in the world, performing in 70 to 80 film scores in the last 27 years. Thatcher is also co-professor of horn at the USC Thornton School of Musics located in Los Angeles, California.

Among his over 1,000 film scores are The Black Hole (1979) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Flashdance (1983), Back to the Future (1985), The Color Purple (1985), Airwolf (1984-1986), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Die Hard (1988), Moonwalker (1988), Dead Poets Society (1989), The Little Mermaid (1989), Pretty Woman (1990), Dick Tracy and Dancing with Wolves (both 1990), The Addams Family and Hook (both 1991), Under Siege (1992), The Bodyguard (1992), Jurassic Park and Schindler's List (both 1993), The Lion King (1994) and Toy Story (1995), Independence Day (1996), Mars Attacks! (1996), Titanic (1997), Starship Troopers (1997), The Mummy (1999), Gladiator (2000), Pearl Harbor (2001), A Beautiful Mind (2001), Ice Age (2002), Batman Begins (2005), X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006, directed by Justin Lin), and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007), Avatar (2009, starring Zoe Saldana), Fast Five and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (both 2011), X-Men: First Class (2011), Green Lantern (2011), and Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011).

More recently, Thatcher played the French horn on The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), Frozen (2013), and Ted 2 (2015).

Star Trek credits[]

External links[]

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