John Williams

John Towner Williams is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. He is one of the most renowned composers in cinematic history, having composed the music for Jaws, the Star Wars, Indiana Jones, two of the Home Alone and Jurassic Park films, and the first three Harry Potter films.

History

Early Life

John Towner Williams was born on February 8, 1932 in Floral Park, New York, to Esther (née Towner) and Johnny Williams, a jazz percussionist who played with the Raymond Scott Quintet. Williams has 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. [...] People with those roots are not inclined to be lazy."

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 privately with the Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Williams had originally briefly attended Los Angeles City College for one semester as the school had a Studio Jazz Band.

In 1952, Williams was drafted U.S. Air Force, where he played the piano, brass and conducted and arranged music for The U.S. Air Force Band as part of his assignments. In a 2016 interview with the US Air Force band, he recounted having attended basic Air Force training at Lackland base (San Antonio, Texas) following which he served as a pianist and brass player, with secondary duties of making arrangements for three years. 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 School where he studied piano with Rosina Lhévinne. During this time Williams worked as a jazz pianist in the city's many jazz clubs.

After moving to Los Angeles, he began working as a session musician, most notably for composer Henry Mancini. He worked with Mancini on the Peter Gunn soundtrack where his fellow musicians in the rhythm section included guitarist Bob Bain, bassist Rolly Bundock, and drummer Jack Sperling, many of whom were also featured on the Mr. Lucky television series.

Known as "Johnny" during the 1950s and early 1960s, Williams composed the music for many television programmes (including several episodes of M Squad), and served as music arranger and bandleader for a series of popular music albums with the singer Frankie Laine.

Career

While skilled in a variety of 20th-century compositional idioms, Williams's most familiar style may be described as a form of neoromanticism, inspired by the late 19th century's large-scale orchestral music—in the style of Tchaikovsky or Richard Wagner's compositions and their concept of leitmotif—that inspired his film music predecessors.

After his studies at Juilliard, and the Eastman School of Music, Williams returned to Los Angeles, where he began working as an orchestrator at film studios. Among other composers, Williams worked with Franz Waxman, Bernard Herrmann, and Alfred Newman, and also with his fellow orchestrators Conrad Salinger and Bob Franklyn.

Williams was also a studio pianist, performing on film scores by composers such as Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, and Henry Mancini. Williams recorded with Henry Mancini the film scores of 1959's Peter Gunn, 1962's Days of Wine and Roses, and 1963's Charade. (Williams actually played the well-recognized opening riff to Mancini's Peter Gunntheme.)

Williams (sometimes credited as "Johnny Williams", because of the already established actor of the same name) composed music for various television programs in the 1960s: the pilot episode of Gilligan's Island, Bachelor Father (1959–1960), the Kraft Suspense Theatre, Lost in Space (1965–68), The Time Tunnel (1966–67), and Land of the Giants (the last three created by the prolific TV producer, Irwin Allen).

Williams's first film composition was for the 1958 B movie Daddy-O, and his first screen credit came two years later in Because They're Young. He soon gained notice in Hollywoodfor his versatility in composing jazz, piano, and symphonic music. Williams received his first Academy Award nomination for his film score for 1967's Valley of the Dolls, and was nominated again for his score for 1969's Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Williams broke through to win his first Academy Award for his film score in the 1971 film Fiddler on the Roof. In 1972, he composed the score for the Robert Altman-directed psychological thriller Images (recorded in collaboration with noted percussionist Stomu Yamashta) which earned him another nomination in the category Best Music, Original Dramatic Score at the 1973 Academy Awards.

During the early 1970s, Williams's prominence grew thanks to his work for now–film producer Irwin Allen's disaster films, composing the scores for 1972's The Poseidon Adventure and 1974's The Towering Inferno. In addition, he scored Universal's 1974 film Earthquake for director Mark Robson, completing a "trinity" of scores for the decade's highest-grossing "disaster films". He also scored the 1972 film The Cowboys, a westernstarring John Wayne and directed by Mark Rydell.

In 1974, director Steven Spielberg approached Williams to compose the music for his feature directorial debut, The Sugarland Express. They teamed up again a year later for Spielberg's second film, Jaws. Widely considered to be a classic suspense film, its film score's ominous, two-note ostinato has become synonymous with sharks and approaching danger. The score earned Williams his second Academy Award, his first for an original composition.

Shortly thereafter, Spielberg and Williams began a long collaboration for their next feature film together, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. During their two-year-long collaboration, they crafted its distinctive five-note figure that functions both in the background music and as the communications signal of the film's extraterrestrials. Williams also used a system of musical hand signals in the film that were based on hand signs created by John Curwen and refined by Zoltán Kodály.

During the same period, Spielberg recommended Williams to his friend and fellow director George Lucas, who needed a composer to score his ambitious 1977 space epic film Star Wars. Williams delivered a grand symphonic score in the fashion of Richard Strauss, Antonín Dvořák, and Golden Age Hollywood composers Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Its main theme, "Luke's Theme" is among the most widely recognized in film history, and the "Force Theme" and "Princess Leia's Theme" are well-known examples of leitmotif. Both the film and its score were immensely successful—it remains the highest grossing non-popular music recording of all-time—and Williams won another Academy Award for Best Original Score.

In 1980, Williams returned to score The Empire Strikes Back, where he introduced "The Imperial March" as the theme for Darth Vader and the Galactic Empire, "Yoda's Theme", and "Han Solo and the Princess". The original Star Wars trilogy concluded with the 1983 film Return of the Jedi, for which Williams's score provided most notably the "Emperor's Theme", "Parade of the Ewoks", and "Luke and Leia". Both scores earned him Academy Award nominations.

Personal Life

Williams married Barbara Ruick, an American actress and singer, in 1956. Together they had three children: Jennifer (b. 1956), Mark Towner Williams (b. 1958), and Joseph (b. 1960), who is the lead singer of Toto. The two remained married until her death in 1974. In 1980, Williams married Samantha Winslow, a photographer.

Awards and Nominations

John Williams has been nominated for 51 Academy Awards, winning 5; 6 Emmy Awards, winning 3; 25 Golden Globe Awards, winning 4; 67 Grammy Awards, winning 23; and has received 7 British Academy Film Awards. With 51 Oscar nominations, Williams currently holds the record for the most Oscar nominations for a living person, and is the second most nominated person in Academy Awards history behind Walt Disney's 59. Forty-six of Williams's Oscar nominations are for Best Original Score and five are for Best Original Song. He won four Oscars for Best Original Score and one for Best Scoring: Adaptation and Original Song Score (Fiddler on the Roof).

In 1980, Williams received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music.

Williams has been inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame and the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame. Williams was honored with the annual Richard Kirk award at the 1999 BMI Film and TV Awards, recognizing his contribution to film and television music. In 2004, he received Kennedy Center Honors. He won a Classic Brit Award in 2005 for his soundtrack work of the previous year.

Notably, Williams has won the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition for his scores for Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, The Empire Strikes Back, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Angela's Ashes, Munich, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and The Book Thief. The competition includes not only composers of film scores, but also composers of instrumental music of any genre, including composers of classical fare such as symphonies and chamber music.

Williams received an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from Boston College in 1993 and from Harvard University in 2017.

In 2003, the International Olympic Committee accorded Williams its highest individual honor, the Olympic Order.

In 2009, Williams received the National Medal of Arts in the White House in Washington, D.C. for his achievements in symphonic music for films, and "as a pre-eminent composer and conductor [whose] scores have defined and inspired modern movie-going for decades."

Williams was made an honorary brother of Kappa Kappa Psi at Boston University in the late 1980s. In 2013, Williams was presented with the Ken Burns Lifetime Achievement Award.

AFI

In 2005, the American Film Institute selected Williams's richly thematic and highly popular score to 1977's Star Wars as the greatest American film score of all time. His scores for Jaws and E.T. also appeared on the list, at No. 6 and No. 14, respectively. He is the only composer to have three scores on the list. Williams received the AFI Life Achievement Award in June 2016, becoming the first composer to receive the award.

Academy Awards

BAFTA Awards

Emmy Awards

Golden Globe Awards

Grammy Awards

Gallery