A Tribute to John Williams

Film composer John Williams has received a staggering 52 Academy Award nominations and has, so far, received five of them. This along with winning 3 Emmy Awards and 25 Grammy Awards.

The Boston Pops is now streaming a concert of Williams’ music with Keith Lockhart leading the orchestra. The concert is called A Tribute to John Williams.

Williams, of course, succeeded Arthur Fiedler as the conductor of the Boston Pops. He led them for 14 seasons. Upon his departure he was given the title of Laureate Conductor.

None of that would matter without the music. From Jaws to Star Wars to E.T. to the Harry Potter Movies and lesser known scores such as The Reivers, How to Steal a Million and the pilot for Gilligan’s Island, Williams has written some of the most beloved film scores of all time.

In addition to performances of music from the many films for which he’s composed music, Williams will appear throughout this program to offer stories about the films and his collaborators.

In 1997 I had the privilege of interviewing Williams about the first three-released Star Wars films on the cusp of them being re-released with new footage. I asked him about his response to the overwhelming sales of the soundtracks to those movies.

Here’s what he said:

“I don’t think we ever had in the history of the record industry or a film business something that was so non-pop, with a small ‘p,’ reach an audience that size. I have to credit the film for a lot of this. If I had written the music without the film probably nobody ever would have heard of the music; it was the combination of things and the elusive, weird, unpredictable aspect of timing that none of us can quite get our hands around. 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 [laughs] with fountains of riches.”

“But it doesn’t work that way, it’s a much more elusive thing than that. Any composer who begins to write a piece would think, ‘this will be a successful piece.’ But you can’t and we don’t pull them out of the air that way. It also reminds us that as artists we don’t work in a vacuum. We write our material, compose it or film it or whatever, but we’re not alone in the vacuum, the audience is also out there and it’s going to hit them. With all the aspects of happenstance and fad, and the issue of skirt length for example, which is to say style and fad, and what is à la mode? When all of these things come together and create a phenomenon like this, we then, as we’re doing now, look back on it say, ‘Why did it happen?’ It’s as fascinating and inexplicable to me as to any viewer.”

He’s a lovely man and obviously a massively talented composer.

Tickets to view A Tribute to John Williams are available with the purchase of a 7-day pass for $9. Boston Symphony Orchestra and Boston Pops also makes available a 30-day pass to watch multiple programs and a season pass. This also includes programming from Tanglewood.

Drawing of John Williams by and courtesy of Adam Tucker Composer from the John Williams Forum on Facebook.