“Aside from his gigantic contribution to film music with Spielberg, Lucas and these events films starting with Jaws, Star Wars, E.T., the Indiana Jones movies and Jurassic Park, making film music part of the conversation in the high arts is an enormous contribution he’s made and is still making.” So says composer/conductor David Newman who will be conducting John Williams’ memorable score for Jaws on Friday and Saturday at the Hollywood Bowl.
Newman, composer of the scores for such films as War of the Roses and Heathers, is going to be spending a lot of time on the podium conducting the music of John Williams in multiple live music to film concerts at the Bowl: Star Wars: A New Hope, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and three nights celebrating the 40th anniversary of Williams at the Bowl. It’s a good thing he’s been around Williams throughout his life.
His father, Alfred Newman and his uncle, Lionel, were part of the music department at 20th Century Fox. Alfred scored such films as All About Eve and The Snake Pit; Lionel scored The Proud Ones and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. “Johnny Williams,” as he was known at the time, was a staff arranger at the studio early in his career. And David had a front row seat for it all.
“I got to hang out there when John and Lionel were there,” he says during a recent phone call. “It was fantastic. John was really good friends with Lionel and it was a really great relationship. For years John had an office at Fox. They worked like dogs. John has an unbelievable work ethic to this day. He writes every day. He’s an amazingly disciplined artist as well as a genius. It’s what a real musician appreciates.”
Not just a composer and conductor, but also a violinist, Newman knows a thing or two about being a musician working with Williams’s scores.
“I played on E.T. I played on 1941. I played on several other John films. I studied violin and conducting. I worked in the studios playing film music to make a living. I never thought of it as a career trajectory. I learned a lot about what it is to conduct film music and later in life writing film music and to try to conduct my own music and I think that John intuited a lot from his time in the Fox system.”
By 1969 “Johnny” Williams became “John” Williams and it was six years later when Jaws was released and immediately became a blockbuster. Williams won his second Academy Award, his first for Best Original Score. (The previous win was for Best Adaption and Song Score for Fiddler on the Roof.) At this weekend’s concerts, Newman says there won’t be any real changes to the score to Jaws beyond the need to put an intermission into the performance.
“Once they get on the boat, that’s the intermission. The whole first act is landlocked and the second act is at sea. John adds some things here and there to make that transition seamless.”
What people remember most about the theme for Jaws is no doubt those two notes that go back and forth that open the film. Newman, who has been studying the score in advance of the performances, has a new appreciation for the music Williams composed.
“Jaws is predicated on this minor second mode. It’s really a metaphor for the shark’s fin going back and forth – the way it moves through the water. It’s really ingenious. It starts the shark before anyone even knows the shark is there. It’s an interesting score – it has a lot of levels to it. It was the first modern event picture. It has a certain quality to it, ‘it’s a swashbuckler and we’re going to see and we’re men and none of our women are with us.’ It has this adventure quality and it’s fascinating. I just love it and working on it.”
For all of his praise for Williams compositional skills, what really thrills Newman is how Williams has shifted the conversation about the role of film music.
“For me, in terms of what’s happening now with live music to film, this contribution that John made to this phenomenon is really unique. John started conducting the Boston Pops in 1980. When you stood up in front of the Boston Symphony or LA Philharmonic in 1980 to do film music there was a lot of resistance to it, based on basically nothing. There was no study of the music as an art form or any of that intellectual capital. To be fair, film music has always been difficult to study because it is very hard to get your hands on the scores and any extant material because a film studio owns it. Even so, to dismiss it out of hand the way the symphonic and the higher arts communities did was, I think, ill-advised and unfounded. I think John Williams, little by little, whittled away at this to where we are now where these live orchestra film events are ubiquitous.”
Newman will be sharing the Bowl stage with Williams during the three-night celebration in late August and early September. Given his long history with the composer, does he feel an extra responsibility picking up the baton for all these concerts?
“I always feel responsibility for anything I do artistically because that’s the nature of growing up and practicing and trying to be a musician and all of that. I feel almost joyous being a part of it. I’m so happy that this music can actually be heard and vetted and not dismissed categorically. Now you can hear it and see how it works and make a judgement for yourself. Just as you would do any ballet, opera or symphonic work. You have to think of all the thousands of works written when Mozart and Beethoven were alive in Vienna and were vetted and didn’t make it. That’s, to a certain degree, what film music is going through now. On a personal note, I’m honored to do it. I understand what my place is in this world. So I’m happy to advocate for it.”
Jaws, David Newman and John Williams photos courtesy of LA Philharmonic