John Williams page

'Symphony orchestras were enormously handy for this because they're elegant and the symphony orchestra itself is one of the greatest inventions of our artistic culture. Fabulous sounds it can produce and a great range of emotional capabilities.'

Personal quote

We all know John Williams as a master of film music. We all remember what kind of impact he made for the movie industry. And people know him as the theme writer of Jaws, Indiana Jones, Superman and Star Wars, with other words "John Williams has captured more hearts then we sometimes realize". There is much that makes this composer one of the best. His trilling tempo he adjust in a lot of adventure scores, his unique talent for writing memorable themes and his pure knack of composing some of the best film music on earth. Inside each score there is a part that describes the movie's soul, no matter if its for drama or war or romance. John Williams can adjust himself to any situation, and Spielberg and Lucas have found some of the best situations possible for Williams to score.

Biography

John Towner Williams was born in Queens, New York City on February 8, 1932, being the oldest of the family. Every one of the family felt a warmth for music in general and little John Williams began to study piano, trombone, trumpet and the clarinet. He graduated from the North Hollywood High School and became a part of the tour of duty were he arranged and conducted for bands. It didn't take long for people started to notice that this person had obvious skills and opportunities. Twentieth Century Fox hired him and he started to score some of the most famous TV shows ever made (Gilligan's Island and Lost in Space). He received his first Oscar nomination in 1967 with The Valley of the Dolls. Very gently the career became the impressive list that movie and music fans can associate with Williams as of today. A large part of John Williams' immense success is due to another young and bright director who struck gold with almost any project. Both they became the massive and biggest successful collaborated duo that conquered Hollywood with high style and amazing works.

The first success came with Jaws, both the movie and score shocked audiences and the two note main theme is know known as the most easily identifiable theme of the entire world. Other massive successes include equal blockbusters of Spielberg such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark and the continuing sequels. But Williams did not perform his biggest talent alone on Spielberg concepts , equally impressive if not even bigger was the astounding success of Lucas' Star Wars and Richard Donner's creation of the man that could fly, Superman. These memorable scores received some of the biggest and best themes and each stands as a sole classic and a pure masterwork.. Williams continued to work with Spielberg and together they created Empire of the Sun, Hook and Jurassic Park (another big blockbuster). And then we simply forget to mention the other collaborations on The Lost World, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, A.I, Minority Report, The Terminal, War of the Worlds and Munich.

But this doesn't mean that Williams simply scored big with big motion pictures. John Williams also maintained to score deeper and darker and performed music for other equally impressive features, including the immense list are Born on the Fourth of July, Far and Away, Nixon, Sleepers, Seven Years in Tibet and Angela's Ashes. In 2000 credits portray the big hit and new start of the saga namely The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, Roland Emmerich's The Patriot and the Harry Potter fantasy commercial band wagon. He continued to score both Harry Potter movies The Chamber of Secrets and The Prisoner of Azkaban and naturally Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. With Memoirs of a Geisha he returned to the softer side of Seven Years in Tibet and received a nomination for it. John Williams maintains to bring stylish and impressive efforts and he stands today as a 5 time Oscar winning composer, 4 time Golden Globe winner and an impressive list that includes 39 Oscar nominations and 18 Golden Globe nominations (not containing song nominations). I think we have said enough.

If we could predict this kind of phenomenon or produce it consciously out of a group effort we would do it every year and we'd all be caliphs surrounded with fountains of riches!
(on the success of Star Wars)

November 17, 2001

I kept using the word magic. There's a wonderfully childish aspect to Harry Potter, so I just thought the orchestral music should be coloured in that way.
(on Harry Potter)

November 17, 2001

The thing about music is that you don't ever retire from it. It's like literature; you're always discovering new things.
(overall impression)