Richard Horowitz, the composer and pianist who received a Golden Globe Award for his soundtrack, with Ryuichi Sakamoto, to The Sheltering Sky, died in Marrakesh, Morocco, on Saturday, April 13, based on a post on the Instagram web page of his spouse, Sussan Deyhim. In its personal tribute, the New York label Rvng Intl., which reissued Horowitz’s album Eros in Arabia, heralded the “incredible tapestry of music [Horowitz] was a part of,” including, “now you are all around us, reborn in the ultimate dimension.”
Horowitz was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1949, and spent a lot of his younger maturity touring Europe performing music. In the Nineteen Seventies, he studied digital music in Paris and the ney (a conventional flute) in Morocco. He, in flip, launched a collection of albums primarily based across the ney between the late Nineteen Seventies and early Nineteen Eighties
In 1981, Horowitz entered two necessary partnerships: the primary with vocalist, dancer, and composer Sussan Deyhim—his future spouse—and the second with Jon Hassell, who swiftly invited Horowitz to hitch his touring operation and work on information, together with Power Spot, that synthesized historic mysticism and trendy music know-how. The similar 12 months, he launched Eros in Arabia, his formal debut album, below the moniker Drahcir Ztiworoh; it has since been heralded as a formative work within the improvement of American minimalism.
Throughout the last decade, Horowitz collaborated with artists together with David Byrne and Brian Eno and jazz greats corresponding to Anthony Braxton, earlier than partnering with Sakamoto for the North African–set romance film The Sheltering Sky in 1990. He spent a lot of his life in Morocco, and, in 1998, co-founded the Gnawa and World Music Festival within the metropolis of Essaouira, now attended by some half one million folks annually. Around the identical time, he was engaged on the rating for what would turn into his best-known soundtrack, to Oliver Stone’s 1999 sports activities thriller Any Given Sunday.
In addition to his musical legacy, Sussan Deyhim’s put up honored Horowitz as “a seeker, a master linguist (most especially fond of a good double entendre), a master pianist and ney player, a humorist, trickster, a loving partner, father, and grandfather, sometimes a critical snob, a traveler and world citizen who believed in our shared humanity. He will be missed beyond measure or time and we ask that he continue to guide us in the melody and tone of the universe.”
