John Williams Popular Books

John Williams Biography & Facts

John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932) is an American composer and conductor. In a career that has spanned seven decades, he has composed some of the most popular, recognizable, and critically acclaimed film scores in cinema history. He has a very distinct sound that mixes romanticism, impressionism, and atonal music with complex orchestration. He is best known for his collaborations with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and has received numerous accolades including 26 Grammy Awards, five Academy Awards, seven BAFTA Awards, three Emmy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards. With 54 Academy Award nominations, he is the second-most nominated person, after Walt Disney, and is the oldest Oscar nominee in any category, at 91 years old. Williams's early work as a film composer includes Valley of the Dolls (1967), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), Images and The Cowboys (both 1972), The Long Goodbye (1973), and The Towering Inferno (1974). He has collaborated with Spielberg since The Sugarland Express (1974), composing music for all but five of his feature films. He received five Academy Awards for Best Original Score for Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977), E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982), and Schindler's List (1993). Other memorable collaborations with Spielberg include Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), the Indiana Jones franchise (1981–2023), Jurassic Park (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Catch Me If You Can (2002), War Horse (2011), Lincoln (2012), and The Fabelmans (2022). He also scored Superman (1978), the first two Home Alone films (1990–1992), and the first three Harry Potter films (2001–2004). Williams has also composed numerous classical concertos and other works for orchestral ensembles and solo instruments. He served as the Boston Pops' principal conductor from 1980 to 1993 and is its laureate conductor. Other works by Williams include theme music for the 1984 Summer Olympic Games; NBC Sunday Night Football; "The Mission" theme (used by NBC News and Seven News in Australia); the television series Lost in Space, Amazing Stories (1985), and Land of the Giants; and, the incidental music for the first season of Gilligan's Island. Williams announced but then rescinded his intention to retire from film score composing after the release of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny in 2023. He has received numerous honors, including the Kennedy Center Honor in 2004, the National Medal of the Arts in 2009, and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2016. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1998, the Hollywood Bowl's Hall of Fame in 2000, and the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 2004. He has composed the score for nine of the top 25 highest-grossing films at the U.S. box office. In 2022, Williams was appointed an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II, "for services to film music". In 2005, the American Film Institute placed Williams's score to Star Wars first on its list AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores; his scores for Jaws and E.T. also made the list. The Library of Congress entered the Star Wars soundtrack into the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Early life and family John Towner Williams was born in Flushing, Queens, New York City, to Esther (née Towner) and Johnny Williams, a jazz drummer and percussionist who played with the Raymond Scott Quintet. He has an older sister, Joan, and two younger brothers, Jerry and Don, who play on his film scores. Williams said of his lineage: "My father was a Maine man—we were very close. My mother was from Boston. My father's parents ran a department store in Bangor, Maine, and my mother's father was a cabinetmaker." Johnny Williams collaborated with Bernard Herrmann, and his son sometimes joined him in rehearsals. In 1948, the Williams family moved to Los Angeles where John attended North Hollywood High School, graduating in 1950. He later attended the University of California, Los Angeles, and studied composition privately with the Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Williams also attended Los Angeles City College for one semester, as the school had a Studio Jazz Band. In 1951, Williams joined the U.S. Air Force, where he played the piano and brass and conducted and arranged music for the U.S. Air Force Band as part of his assignments. In a 2016 interview with the U.S. Air Force Band, he recounted having attended basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, after which he served as a pianist and brass player, with secondary duties of making arrangements for three years. In March 1952, he was assigned to the Northeast Air Command 596th Air Force Band, stationed at Pepperrell Air Force Base in St. John's, Newfoundland. He also attended music courses at the University of Arizona as part of his service. In 1955, following his Air Force service, Williams moved to New York City and entered Juilliard, where he studied piano with Rosina Lhévinne. He was originally set on becoming a concert pianist, but after hearing contemporary pianists like John Browning and Van Cliburn perform, he switched his focus to composition. "It became clear," he recalled, "that I could write better than I could play." During this time Williams worked as a pianist in many of the city's jazz clubs. Early career After his studies at Juilliard and the Eastman School of Music, Williams went to Los Angeles where he began working as an orchestrator at film studios. Williams worked with such composers as Franz Waxman, Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Newman, and with fellow orchestrators Conrad Salinger and Bob Franklyn. Williams was also a studio pianist and session musician, performing on scores by such composers as Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein and Henry Mancini. With Mancini, he recorded the scores of Peter Gunn (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Days of Wine and Roses (1962), and Charade (1963), and played the piano part of the guitar-piano ostinato in Mancini's Peter Gunn title theme. With Elmer Bernstein, he performed on the scores of Alexander Mackendrick's Sweet Smell of Success (1957) and Robert Mulligan's To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). Williams was also the pianist on the scores of Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960) and Robert Wise's West Side Story (1961). Known as Johnny Williams during this period, he released several jazz albums under this name, including Jazz Beginnings, World on a String, and The John Towner Touch. Williams also served as music arranger and bandleader for a series of popular music albums with the singers Ray Vasquez and Frankie Laine. Film and television scoring While fluent in many 20th-century musical languages, Williams's most familiar style is neoromanticism. Williams's score for Star Wars is often described as Wagnerian as it makes use of the leitmotif, a musical phrase associated with a place, character or idea. Williams downplays the influence of .... Discover the John Williams popular books. Find the top 100 most popular John Williams books.