John Williams (composer)
From Alfred Hitchcock Wiki
- born: 08/Feb/1932 (Floral Park, Long Island, New York, USA)
- see also: John Williams (actor)
Biography
John Towner Williams is one of the most widely recognized composers of film scores. As of 2006, he has received 45 Academy Award nominations, an accomplishment surpassed only by Walt Disney.
Williams is best known for heroic, rousing themes to adventure and fantasy films. This includes some of the highest grossing films of all time, such as "Star Wars", "Superman", "Jaws", "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Jurassic Park", and the first three "Harry Potter" movies. His richly thematic and highly popular 1977 score to the first "Star Wars" film was selected by the American Film Institute as the greatest American movie score of all time. So far, five of his film scores have won Oscars.
His long career has also included many sensitive dramatic scores (such as "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan") and more experimental concert works. As of March 2006, his latest works include the scores for the recent movies "Munich" and "Memoirs of a Geisha".
Early life
John Williams was born in Floral Park, New York. In 1948, John Williams and his family moved to Los Angeles, California, where he attended UCLA. He also studied composition privately with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, who also taught another famous film score composer, Jerry Goldsmith.
In 1952, Williams was drafted and entered the United States Air Force, where he conducted and arranged music for Air Force bands. When discharged in 1954, he returned to New York. There, he went to Juilliard, the alma mater of musicians including the composer Philip Glass and violinist Itzhak Perlman (with whom Williams released an album, "Cinema Serenade", in 1997). He studied piano at the school with Rosina Lhevinne. In New York, he worked as a jazz pianist. He also played with noted composer Henry Mancini and even performed on the recording of the famous "Peter Gunn" theme. In the early 1960s, he served as arranger/bandleader on a series of popular albums with singing great Frankie Laine.
Film scoring
Williams later returned to Los Angeles, where he started working in the film studios. There he worked with some of the finest film score composers of that time: Franz Waxman, Bernard Herrmann, and Alfred Newman. He began his career composing TV scores for series including "Gilligan's Island", "Lost in Space", and "The Time Tunnel".
In the early 1970s, he established himself as a composer for big-budget disaster films with scores for "The Towering Inferno", "Earthquake", and "The Poseidon Adventure". In 1974, Williams was approached by a young Steven Spielberg to write the music for his feature debut, "The Sugarland Express". They re-teamed for the director's second film, "Jaws", featuring an ominous two-note motif representing the shark. Spielberg's friendship with director George Lucas led to Williams's composing for the "Star Wars" movies. Over thirty years later, the Williams-Spielberg collaboration has proven to be one of Hollywood's most enduring and fruitful. To date, Williams has composed the music to all but two of Spielberg's movies (Quincy Jones was composer for 1985's "The Color Purple", and "Twilight Zone: The Movie" which was composed by Jerry Goldsmith).
He has been nominated for 45 Academy Awards, of which he has won five (for "Jaws", "Star Wars", now known as "Episode IV: A New Hope", "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial", "Schindler's List", and for arrangements in "Fiddler on the Roof"). He currently holds the record for the most Oscar nominations for a living person and has the same number of Oscar nominations as Alfred Newman. He also holds the record for the most Academy Award losses ever.
Williams has received two Emmy Awards, seven BAFTAs, eighteen Grammy Awards, and has been inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame and the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame. In 2004 he received a Kennedy Center Honor. He also won a Classical Brit award in 2005 for his soundtrack work of the previous year. On January 16, 2006, Williams won a Golden Globe, his fourth, for his score in "Memoirs of a Geisha".
Filmography
With Hitchcock...
- Family Plot (1976) - composer
Other works of note...
- Jaws (1975) - composer
- Star Wars (1977) - composer
- Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) - composer
- Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) - composer
- Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) - composer
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) - composer
- Schindler's List (1993) - composer
- Saving Private Ryan (1998) - composer
Documentaries
He has appeared in the following Hitchcockian documentaries...
- Plotting Family Plot (2001)