John Williams

John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932, in New York City) is an American composer and conductor, widely considered one of the most successful and influential film composers in history. Over a career spanning seven decades, he has written some of the most recognizable and enduring scores in cinema, and his style blends romanticism, impressionism, and atonality with richly complex orchestration. Best known for his long-running collaborations with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, he composed landmark music for films including Star Wars, Jaws, Superman, Indiana Jones, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Schindler's List, Jurassic Park, Home Alone, and the first three Harry Potter films. He has also written numerous concert works, television themes, and ceremonial music, including themes for Olympic broadcasts, NBC Sunday Night Football, Great Performances, and NBC News' "The Mission".

Williams is among the most decorated figures in film music, with five Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, seven British Academy Film Awards, three Emmy Awards, and 27 Grammy Awards. With 54 Academy Award nominations, he is the second most-nominated person in Oscar history, behind only Walt Disney, as well as the most-nominated living person. He also became the oldest Academy Award nominee in any category, receiving a nomination at age 91. In 2005, the American Film Institute ranked his score for Star Wars first on its list of the greatest American film scores, and his scores for Jaws and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial were also included; the Star Wars soundtrack was later added to the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress. He served as principal conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra from 1980 to 1993 and remains its laureate conductor.

Born in Queens and raised in Los Angeles, Williams was the son of Esther Towner Williams and jazz drummer Johnny Williams, who played with the Raymond Scott Quintet. He grew up in a musical family with an older sister, Joan, and two younger brothers, Jerry and Don, who later performed on his film scores. After moving with his family to Los Angeles in 1948, he attended North Hollywood High School and graduated in 1950. He studied at UCLA, spent a semester at Los Angeles City College playing in the studio jazz band, and took private composition lessons with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

In 1951 Williams joined the U.S. Air Force, where he played piano and bass and arranged and conducted music for the Air Force Band. In 1952 he was assigned to the 596th Air Force Band at Pepperrell Air Force Base in St. John's, Newfoundland, and also took music courses at the University of Arizona during his service. After leaving the military, he returned to New York in 1955 and studied piano privately with Rosina Lhévinne at Juilliard. Originally intending to become a concert pianist, he turned his focus increasingly toward composition. During this period he worked as a jazz pianist in clubs and studios, and later returned to Los Angeles to begin studio work as an orchestrator and session musician.

Early in his career, Williams worked with composers including Franz Waxman, Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman, Henry Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith, and Elmer Bernstein. As a pianist and studio musician, he performed on scores for films such as Peter Gunn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Days of Wine and Roses, Charade, Sweet Smell of Success, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Apartment, and West Side Story. He also released several jazz albums under the name Johnny Williams and served as arranger and bandleader for recordings by Frankie Laine.

Williams began composing for film and television in the 1950s. His earliest screen work included music for television series such as Bachelor Father, Kraft Suspense Theatre, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants, and the pilot of Gilligan's Island. His first feature-film assignments included Daddy-O (1958) and Because They're Young (1960), and his early work as a film composer went on to include None but the Brave (1965), How to Steal a Million (1966), Valley of the Dolls (1967), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), The Reivers (1969), Images (1972), The Cowboys (1972), The Long Goodbye (1973), and disaster films such as The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, and The Towering Inferno. He won his first Academy Award for his adaptation of Jerry Bock's music for Fiddler on the Roof (1971).

His collaboration with Spielberg began with The Sugarland Express (1974) and became one of the most enduring partnerships in Hollywood history, ultimately encompassing all but five of Spielberg's feature films. Williams' score for Jaws (1975) earned him his second Oscar, and its famous two-note ostinato became synonymous with approaching danger. He followed it with major scores for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), whose five-note motif became central to the film's alien communication, and 1941 (1979). For Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), he wrote the iconic "Raiders March," beginning a musical legacy that continued through the entire Indiana Jones franchise from 1981 to 2023.

Williams also defined the sound of blockbuster cinema through his work with George Lucas, most notably on Star Wars (1977), which earned him his third Academy Award. He later won Oscars for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Schindler's List (1993), the latter featuring violinist Itzhak Perlman. Other notable Spielberg collaborations include Empire of the Sun, Always, Hook, Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Catch Me If You Can, War Horse, Lincoln, and The Fabelmans. He also wrote the theme for Spielberg's television anthology Amazing Stories and composed the fanfare for the DreamWorks Pictures logo.

Beyond his famous symphonic style, Williams has shown remarkable versatility, from the jazz-inflected score of Catch Me If You Can to the restrained modernism of A.I. Artificial Intelligence. He also scored Superman and two sequels, the first two Home Alone films, and worked with directors including William Wyler, Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma, Clint Eastwood, George Miller, Oliver Stone, Chris Columbus, Ron Howard, Barry Levinson, John Singleton, Alan Parker, Alfonso Cuarón, and Rob Marshall. He has composed music for nine of the 25 highest-grossing films in U.S. box-office history and has continued working into his 90s while maintaining a prolific output in both film and concert music.

Among his many honors, Williams was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1998, the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame in 2000, and the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 2004. He received the Kennedy Center Honor in 2004, the National Medal of the Arts in 2009, and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2016. In 2022 he was awarded an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II for services to film music.

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