Tag: John Williams

  • Hollywood’s maestro goes for more Oscars history: John Williams

    By AFP

    NEW YORK: From “Star Wars” to “Jaws” to “Schindler’s List,” John Williams has written many of the most instantly recognizable scores in cinema history.

    The 91-year-old is already the oldest person to receive an Oscar nomination for a competitive award, which he earned thanks to his spare yet poignant compositions for Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans.”

    With 53 total nods, Williams has more Academy Award nominations than any other living person, and is second only to Walt Disney, who had 59.

    And if he gets another statuette on Sunday, which would be his sixth, he will become the oldest person ever to triumph in any competitive category. The record is currently held by screenwriter James Ivory, who was 89 when he won.

    It “seems unreal that anybody could be that old and working that long,” Williams recently told NBC News, adding: “It’s very exciting, even after 53 years.”

    “I’m very pleased, I think it’s a human thing — the gratification of any kind of appreciation of one’s work.”

    Out of the dozens of nominations over the course of his extraordinary career, the composer won Academy Awards for the original “Star Wars,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and three films by Spielberg, with whom he is closely associated — “Jaws,” “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” and “Schindler’s List.”

    He’s even competed against himself multiple times for Oscars glory.

    William is known for his grand neo-Romantic scores in the fashion of Wagner, a contrast to the more experimental fare prevalent among many modern composers outside Hollywood.

    But his work is also steeped in mid-century influences including jazz and popular American standards.

    Williams holds he’s not as Wagnerian as his music might indicate, but admits the 19th century German giant’s influence on Hollywood’s early composers, and therefore his own, is palpable.

    “Wagner lives with us here — you can’t escape it,” he told The New Yorker in 2020.

    “I have been in the big river swimming with all of them.”

    ‘Single greatest collaboration’

    Williams was born on February 8, 1932 in New York’s Queens borough to a percussionist father, and was the eldest of four children.

    The family moved to Los Angeles in 1948, where Williams later studied composition and took a semester of jazz band at Los Angeles City College.

    While in the Air Force, he played both piano and brass while arranging music for the service’s band.

    Afterwards, he moved to New York, where he enrolled at the prestigious Juilliard school to study piano.

    Though he aspired to be a concert pianist, it became clear to Williams that composition was his true forte.

    He moved back to LA, where he worked on orchestrations at film studios — earning plaudits for his range — and as a session pianist, including for the film adaptation of Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story.”

    Williams notched his first Oscar nod for the 1967 film “Valley of the Dolls,” and won his first in 1972 for “Fiddler on the Roof.”

    His momentous partnership with Spielberg began in the early 1970s, when the soon to be household-name director approached him to score his debut, “The Sugarland Express.”

    Spielberg approached him once more to work on his second film, “Jaws.”

    The menacing two-note ostinato Williams composed for the film has practically become synonymous with fear itself: “John Williams actually is the teeth of Jaws,” Spielberg said last year at a concert for the composer’s 90th birthday.

    The pair then worked on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and a decades-long creative partnership unfurled.

    At the Williams birthday celebration in Washington, Spielberg dubbed their relationship “the single greatest collaboration of my career and one of the deepest friendships of my life.”

    “Through the medium of movies, John has popularized motion picture scores more than any other composer in history.”

    ‘Soundtrack of our lives’

    Spielberg also introduced Williams to one George Lucas — it would become another iconic collaboration that spawned perhaps the most recognizable film score ever.

    Several of Williams’ “Star Wars” compositions are prime examples of leitmotif, with musical cues tying together the vast, character-rich story.

    “He has written the soundtrack of our lives,” conductor Gustavo Dudamel told The New York Times last year. “When we listen to a melody of John’s, we go back to a time, to a taste, to a smell.”

    “All our senses go back to a moment.”

    Other credits from Williams’ more than 100 film scores include the music for 1978’s “Superman,” the first three “Harry Potter” films and a number of “Indiana Jones” films.

    “Harrison Ford made Indiana Jones into an iconic action hero, but John made us believe in adventure again, through that pulse-pounding march,” said Spielberg.

    Off-screen, he is responsible for the “Olympic Fanfare and Theme” first composed for the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles and used ever since on US broadcasts.

    Williams has recently indicated he might take a step back from film scoring, giving more energy to conducting and composing concert music; he was a longtime leader of the Boston Pops orchestra.

    But speaking at a panel with Spielberg earlier this year, Williams seemed to walk back the notion of slowing down, vowing to work until he’s 100 or so.

    “So I’ve got 10 more years to go. I’ll stick around for a while!” he told the crowd. “You can’t ‘retire’ from music.”

    “It’s like breathing.”

    NEW YORK: From “Star Wars” to “Jaws” to “Schindler’s List,” John Williams has written many of the most instantly recognizable scores in cinema history.

    The 91-year-old is already the oldest person to receive an Oscar nomination for a competitive award, which he earned thanks to his spare yet poignant compositions for Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans.”

    With 53 total nods, Williams has more Academy Award nominations than any other living person, and is second only to Walt Disney, who had 59.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    And if he gets another statuette on Sunday, which would be his sixth, he will become the oldest person ever to triumph in any competitive category. The record is currently held by screenwriter James Ivory, who was 89 when he won.

    It “seems unreal that anybody could be that old and working that long,” Williams recently told NBC News, adding: “It’s very exciting, even after 53 years.”

    “I’m very pleased, I think it’s a human thing — the gratification of any kind of appreciation of one’s work.”

    Out of the dozens of nominations over the course of his extraordinary career, the composer won Academy Awards for the original “Star Wars,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and three films by Spielberg, with whom he is closely associated — “Jaws,” “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” and “Schindler’s List.”

    He’s even competed against himself multiple times for Oscars glory.

    William is known for his grand neo-Romantic scores in the fashion of Wagner, a contrast to the more experimental fare prevalent among many modern composers outside Hollywood.

    But his work is also steeped in mid-century influences including jazz and popular American standards.

    Williams holds he’s not as Wagnerian as his music might indicate, but admits the 19th century German giant’s influence on Hollywood’s early composers, and therefore his own, is palpable.

    “Wagner lives with us here — you can’t escape it,” he told The New Yorker in 2020.

    “I have been in the big river swimming with all of them.”

    ‘Single greatest collaboration’

    Williams was born on February 8, 1932 in New York’s Queens borough to a percussionist father, and was the eldest of four children.

    The family moved to Los Angeles in 1948, where Williams later studied composition and took a semester of jazz band at Los Angeles City College.

    While in the Air Force, he played both piano and brass while arranging music for the service’s band.

    Afterwards, he moved to New York, where he enrolled at the prestigious Juilliard school to study piano.

    Though he aspired to be a concert pianist, it became clear to Williams that composition was his true forte.

    He moved back to LA, where he worked on orchestrations at film studios — earning plaudits for his range — and as a session pianist, including for the film adaptation of Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story.”

    Williams notched his first Oscar nod for the 1967 film “Valley of the Dolls,” and won his first in 1972 for “Fiddler on the Roof.”

    His momentous partnership with Spielberg began in the early 1970s, when the soon to be household-name director approached him to score his debut, “The Sugarland Express.”

    Spielberg approached him once more to work on his second film, “Jaws.”

    The menacing two-note ostinato Williams composed for the film has practically become synonymous with fear itself: “John Williams actually is the teeth of Jaws,” Spielberg said last year at a concert for the composer’s 90th birthday.

    The pair then worked on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and a decades-long creative partnership unfurled.

    At the Williams birthday celebration in Washington, Spielberg dubbed their relationship “the single greatest collaboration of my career and one of the deepest friendships of my life.”

    “Through the medium of movies, John has popularized motion picture scores more than any other composer in history.”

    ‘Soundtrack of our lives’

    Spielberg also introduced Williams to one George Lucas — it would become another iconic collaboration that spawned perhaps the most recognizable film score ever.

    Several of Williams’ “Star Wars” compositions are prime examples of leitmotif, with musical cues tying together the vast, character-rich story.

    “He has written the soundtrack of our lives,” conductor Gustavo Dudamel told The New York Times last year. “When we listen to a melody of John’s, we go back to a time, to a taste, to a smell.”

    “All our senses go back to a moment.”

    Other credits from Williams’ more than 100 film scores include the music for 1978’s “Superman,” the first three “Harry Potter” films and a number of “Indiana Jones” films.

    “Harrison Ford made Indiana Jones into an iconic action hero, but John made us believe in adventure again, through that pulse-pounding march,” said Spielberg.

    Off-screen, he is responsible for the “Olympic Fanfare and Theme” first composed for the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles and used ever since on US broadcasts.

    Williams has recently indicated he might take a step back from film scoring, giving more energy to conducting and composing concert music; he was a longtime leader of the Boston Pops orchestra.

    But speaking at a panel with Spielberg earlier this year, Williams seemed to walk back the notion of slowing down, vowing to work until he’s 100 or so.

    “So I’ve got 10 more years to go. I’ll stick around for a while!” he told the crowd. “You can’t ‘retire’ from music.”

    “It’s like breathing.”

  • Hollywood’s maestro goes for more Oscars history: John Williams

    By AFP

    NEW YORK: From “Star Wars” to “Jaws” to “Schindler’s List,” John Williams has written many of the most instantly recognizable scores in cinema history.

    The 91-year-old is already the oldest person to receive an Oscar nomination for a competitive award, which he earned thanks to his spare yet poignant compositions for Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans.”

    With 53 total nods, Williams has more Academy Award nominations than any other living person, and is second only to Walt Disney, who had 59.

    And if he gets another statuette on Sunday, which would be his sixth, he will become the oldest person ever to triumph in any competitive category. The record is currently held by screenwriter James Ivory, who was 89 when he won.

    It “seems unreal that anybody could be that old and working that long,” Williams recently told NBC News, adding: “It’s very exciting, even after 53 years.”

    “I’m very pleased, I think it’s a human thing — the gratification of any kind of appreciation of one’s work.”

    Out of the dozens of nominations over the course of his extraordinary career, the composer won Academy Awards for the original “Star Wars,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and three films by Spielberg, with whom he is closely associated — “Jaws,” “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” and “Schindler’s List.”

    He’s even competed against himself multiple times for Oscars glory.

    William is known for his grand neo-Romantic scores in the fashion of Wagner, a contrast to the more experimental fare prevalent among many modern composers outside Hollywood.

    But his work is also steeped in mid-century influences including jazz and popular American standards.

    Williams holds he’s not as Wagnerian as his music might indicate, but admits the 19th century German giant’s influence on Hollywood’s early composers, and therefore his own, is palpable.

    “Wagner lives with us here — you can’t escape it,” he told The New Yorker in 2020.

    “I have been in the big river swimming with all of them.”

    ‘Single greatest collaboration’

    Williams was born on February 8, 1932 in New York’s Queens borough to a percussionist father, and was the eldest of four children.

    The family moved to Los Angeles in 1948, where Williams later studied composition and took a semester of jazz band at Los Angeles City College.

    While in the Air Force, he played both piano and brass while arranging music for the service’s band.

    Afterwards, he moved to New York, where he enrolled at the prestigious Juilliard school to study piano.

    Though he aspired to be a concert pianist, it became clear to Williams that composition was his true forte.

    He moved back to LA, where he worked on orchestrations at film studios — earning plaudits for his range — and as a session pianist, including for the film adaptation of Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story.”

    Williams notched his first Oscar nod for the 1967 film “Valley of the Dolls,” and won his first in 1972 for “Fiddler on the Roof.”

    His momentous partnership with Spielberg began in the early 1970s, when the soon to be household-name director approached him to score his debut, “The Sugarland Express.”

    Spielberg approached him once more to work on his second film, “Jaws.”

    The menacing two-note ostinato Williams composed for the film has practically become synonymous with fear itself: “John Williams actually is the teeth of Jaws,” Spielberg said last year at a concert for the composer’s 90th birthday.

    The pair then worked on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and a decades-long creative partnership unfurled.

    At the Williams birthday celebration in Washington, Spielberg dubbed their relationship “the single greatest collaboration of my career and one of the deepest friendships of my life.”

    “Through the medium of movies, John has popularized motion picture scores more than any other composer in history.”

    ‘Soundtrack of our lives’

    Spielberg also introduced Williams to one George Lucas — it would become another iconic collaboration that spawned perhaps the most recognizable film score ever.

    Several of Williams’ “Star Wars” compositions are prime examples of leitmotif, with musical cues tying together the vast, character-rich story.

    “He has written the soundtrack of our lives,” conductor Gustavo Dudamel told The New York Times last year. “When we listen to a melody of John’s, we go back to a time, to a taste, to a smell.”

    “All our senses go back to a moment.”

    Other credits from Williams’ more than 100 film scores include the music for 1978’s “Superman,” the first three “Harry Potter” films and a number of “Indiana Jones” films.

    “Harrison Ford made Indiana Jones into an iconic action hero, but John made us believe in adventure again, through that pulse-pounding march,” said Spielberg.

    Off-screen, he is responsible for the “Olympic Fanfare and Theme” first composed for the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles and used ever since on US broadcasts.

    Williams has recently indicated he might take a step back from film scoring, giving more energy to conducting and composing concert music; he was a longtime leader of the Boston Pops orchestra.

    But speaking at a panel with Spielberg earlier this year, Williams seemed to walk back the notion of slowing down, vowing to work until he’s 100 or so.

    “So I’ve got 10 more years to go. I’ll stick around for a while!” he told the crowd. “You can’t ‘retire’ from music.”

    “It’s like breathing.”

    NEW YORK: From “Star Wars” to “Jaws” to “Schindler’s List,” John Williams has written many of the most instantly recognizable scores in cinema history.

    The 91-year-old is already the oldest person to receive an Oscar nomination for a competitive award, which he earned thanks to his spare yet poignant compositions for Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans.”

    With 53 total nods, Williams has more Academy Award nominations than any other living person, and is second only to Walt Disney, who had 59.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    And if he gets another statuette on Sunday, which would be his sixth, he will become the oldest person ever to triumph in any competitive category. The record is currently held by screenwriter James Ivory, who was 89 when he won.

    It “seems unreal that anybody could be that old and working that long,” Williams recently told NBC News, adding: “It’s very exciting, even after 53 years.”

    “I’m very pleased, I think it’s a human thing — the gratification of any kind of appreciation of one’s work.”

    Out of the dozens of nominations over the course of his extraordinary career, the composer won Academy Awards for the original “Star Wars,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and three films by Spielberg, with whom he is closely associated — “Jaws,” “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” and “Schindler’s List.”

    He’s even competed against himself multiple times for Oscars glory.

    William is known for his grand neo-Romantic scores in the fashion of Wagner, a contrast to the more experimental fare prevalent among many modern composers outside Hollywood.

    But his work is also steeped in mid-century influences including jazz and popular American standards.

    Williams holds he’s not as Wagnerian as his music might indicate, but admits the 19th century German giant’s influence on Hollywood’s early composers, and therefore his own, is palpable.

    “Wagner lives with us here — you can’t escape it,” he told The New Yorker in 2020.

    “I have been in the big river swimming with all of them.”

    ‘Single greatest collaboration’

    Williams was born on February 8, 1932 in New York’s Queens borough to a percussionist father, and was the eldest of four children.

    The family moved to Los Angeles in 1948, where Williams later studied composition and took a semester of jazz band at Los Angeles City College.

    While in the Air Force, he played both piano and brass while arranging music for the service’s band.

    Afterwards, he moved to New York, where he enrolled at the prestigious Juilliard school to study piano.

    Though he aspired to be a concert pianist, it became clear to Williams that composition was his true forte.

    He moved back to LA, where he worked on orchestrations at film studios — earning plaudits for his range — and as a session pianist, including for the film adaptation of Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story.”

    Williams notched his first Oscar nod for the 1967 film “Valley of the Dolls,” and won his first in 1972 for “Fiddler on the Roof.”

    His momentous partnership with Spielberg began in the early 1970s, when the soon to be household-name director approached him to score his debut, “The Sugarland Express.”

    Spielberg approached him once more to work on his second film, “Jaws.”

    The menacing two-note ostinato Williams composed for the film has practically become synonymous with fear itself: “John Williams actually is the teeth of Jaws,” Spielberg said last year at a concert for the composer’s 90th birthday.

    The pair then worked on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and a decades-long creative partnership unfurled.

    At the Williams birthday celebration in Washington, Spielberg dubbed their relationship “the single greatest collaboration of my career and one of the deepest friendships of my life.”

    “Through the medium of movies, John has popularized motion picture scores more than any other composer in history.”

    ‘Soundtrack of our lives’

    Spielberg also introduced Williams to one George Lucas — it would become another iconic collaboration that spawned perhaps the most recognizable film score ever.

    Several of Williams’ “Star Wars” compositions are prime examples of leitmotif, with musical cues tying together the vast, character-rich story.

    “He has written the soundtrack of our lives,” conductor Gustavo Dudamel told The New York Times last year. “When we listen to a melody of John’s, we go back to a time, to a taste, to a smell.”

    “All our senses go back to a moment.”

    Other credits from Williams’ more than 100 film scores include the music for 1978’s “Superman,” the first three “Harry Potter” films and a number of “Indiana Jones” films.

    “Harrison Ford made Indiana Jones into an iconic action hero, but John made us believe in adventure again, through that pulse-pounding march,” said Spielberg.

    Off-screen, he is responsible for the “Olympic Fanfare and Theme” first composed for the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles and used ever since on US broadcasts.

    Williams has recently indicated he might take a step back from film scoring, giving more energy to conducting and composing concert music; he was a longtime leader of the Boston Pops orchestra.

    But speaking at a panel with Spielberg earlier this year, Williams seemed to walk back the notion of slowing down, vowing to work until he’s 100 or so.

    “So I’ve got 10 more years to go. I’ll stick around for a while!” he told the crowd. “You can’t ‘retire’ from music.”

    “It’s like breathing.”

  • Five-time Oscar-winning composer John Williams, 90, steps away from film, but not music

    By Associated Press

    NEW YORK: After more than six decades of making bicycles soar, sending panicked swimmers to the shore and other spellbinding close encounters, John Williams is putting the final notes on what may be his last film score.

    “At the moment I’m working on ‘Indiana Jones 5,’ which Harrison Ford — who’s quite a bit younger than I am — I think has announced will be his last film,” Williams says. “So, I thought: If Harrison can do it, then perhaps I can, also.”

    Ford, for the record, hasn’t said that publicly. And Williams, who turned 90 in February, isn’t absolutely certain he’s ready to, either.

    “I don’t want to be seen as categorically eliminating any activity,” Williams says with a chuckle, speaking by phone from his home in Los Angeles. “I can’t play tennis, but I like to be able to believe that maybe one day I will.”

    Right now, though, there are other ways Williams wants to be spending his time. A “Star Wars” film demands six months of work, which he notes, “at this point in life is a long commitment to me.” Instead, Williams is devoting himself to composing concert music, including a piano concerto he’s writing for Emanuel Ax.

    This spring, Williams and cellist Yo-Yo Ma released the album “A Gathering of Friends,” recorded with the New York Philharmonic, Pablo Sáinz-Villegas and Jessica Zhou. It’s a radiant collection of cello concertos and new arrangements from the scores of “Schindler’s List,” “Lincoln” and “Munich,” including the sublime “A Prayer for Peace.”

    Turning 90 — an event that the Kennedy Center and Tanglewood are celebrating this summer with birthday concerts — has caused Williams to reflect on his accomplishments, his remaining ambitions and what a lifetime of music has meant to him.

    “It’s given me the ability to breathe, the ability to live and understand that there’s more to corporal life,” Williams says. “Without being religious, which I’m not especially, there is a spiritual life, an artistic life, a realm that’s above the mundanities of everyday realities. Music can raise one’s thinking to the level of poetry. We can reflect on how necessary music has been for humanity. I always like to speculate that music is older than language, that we were probably beating drums and blowing on reeds before we could speak. So it’s an essential part of our humanity.

    “It’s given me my life.”

    And, in turn, Williams has provided the soundtrack to the lives of countless others through more than 100 film scores, among them “Star Wars,”“Jurassic Park,” “Jaws,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T.,” “Indiana Jones,”“Superman,” “Schindler’s List” and “ Harry Potter.”

    It’s an amount of accomplishment that’s hard to quantify. Five Oscars and 52 Academy Award nominations, a number bested only by Walt Disney, is one measurement. But even that hardly hints at the cultural power of his music. A billion people might be able to instantly hum Williams’ two-note ostinato from “Jaws” or “The Imperial March” from “Star Wars.”

    “I’m told that the music is played all over the world. What could be more rewarding than that?” says Williams. “But I have to say it seems unreal. I can only see what’s in front of me at the piano right at this moment, and do my best with that.”

    All those indelible, perfectly constructed themes, he believes, are the product less of divine inspiration than daily hard work. Williams does most of his work sitting for hours at a time at his Steinway, composing in pencil.

    “It’s like cutting a stone at your desk,” he says. “My younger colleagues are much faster than I am because they have electronic equipment and computers and synthesizers and so on.”

    When Williams began (his first feature film score was 1958’s “Daddy-O”), the cinematic tradition of grand, orchestral scores was beginning to lose out to pop soundtracks. Now, many are gravitating toward synthesized music for film. Increasingly, Williams has the aura of a venerated old master who bridges distant eras of film and music.

    “Recording with the New York Philharmonic, the whole orchestra to a person were awestruck by this gentleman at now 90 who hears everything, is unfailingly kind, gentle, polite. People just wanted to play for him,” says Ma. “They were floored by the musicianship of this man.”

    This late chapter in Williams’ career is in some ways a chance to place his mammoth legacy not just in connection with cinema but among the classical legends. Williams, who led the Boston Pops from 1980 to 1993, has conducted the Berlin, Vienna and New York philharmonics, among others. In the world’s elite orchestras, Williams’ compositions have passed into canon.

    Williams’ enduring partnership with Steven Spielberg has, of course, helped the composer’s odds. Spielberg, who first sought out a lunch with Williams in 1972 after being captivated by his score to “The Reivers,” has called him “the single most significant contributor to my success as a filmmaker.”

    “Without John Williams, bikes don’t really fly,” Spielberg said when the AFI honored Williams in 2016.

    They remain irrevocably linked. Their offices on the Universal lot are just steps from one another. Along with “Indiana Jones,” Williams recently scored Spielberg’s upcoming semi-autobiographical drama about growing up in Arizona, “The Fabelmans.” The two movies make it 30 films together for Spielberg and Williams.

    “It’s been 50 years now. Maybe we’re starting on the next 50,” says Williams with a laugh.

    In Spielberg’s films and others, Williams has carved out enough perfectly condensed melodies to rival the Beatles. Spielberg once described his five-note “Communication Motif” from “Close Encounters” as “a doorbell.”

    “Simple little themes that speak clearly and without obfuscation are very hard to find and very hard to do,” says Williams. “They really are the result of a lot of work. It’s almost like chiseling. Move one note, change a rhythmic emphasis or the direction of an interval and so on. A simple tune can be done in dozens of ways. If you find one that, it seems like you discovered something that wanted to be uncovered.”