John Towner Williams
(born February 8, 1932) is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career that spans six decades, Williams has composed many of the most famous film scores in Hollywood history, including Star Wars
, Superman
, Home Alone
, the first three Harry Potter
movies and all but two of Steven Spielberg's feature films including the Indiana Jones
series, Schindler's List
, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
, Jurassic Park
and Jaws
. He also composed the soundtrack for the hit 1960s TV series Lost in Space.
Williams has composed theme music for four Olympic Games, the NBC Nightly News, the inauguration of Barack Obama, and numerous television series and concert pieces. He served as the principal conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra from 1980 to 1993, and is now the orchestra's laureate conductor.
Williams is a five-time winner of the Academy Award. He has also won four Golden Globe Awards, seven BAFTA Awards and 21 Grammy Awards. [1] With 45 Academy Award nominations, Williams is, together with composer Alfred Newman, the second most nominated individual after Walt Disney. [2] He was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame in 2000, and was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004.
Williams' theme music from the film The Patriot
was played after Barack Obama's election victory speech.
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JOHN WILLIAMS - COMPOSER TICKETS
| EVENT | DATE | AVAILABILITY |
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| Los Angeles Philharmonic: Yo-Yo Ma, John Williams and Gustavo Dudamel Tickets 4/3 | Apr 03, 2025
Thu, 8:00 PM |  | | Los Angeles Philharmonic: Yo-Yo Ma, John Williams and Gustavo Dudamel Tickets 4/4 | Apr 04, 2025
Fri, 8:00 PM | | | Los Angeles Philharmonic: John Williams Spotlight Tickets 4/5 | Apr 05, 2025
Sat, 8:00 PM | | | Los Angeles Philharmonic: John Williams Spotlight Tickets 4/6 | Apr 06, 2025
Sun, 2:00 PM | |
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Early life and family
John Williams was born on
February 8,
1932, in
Flushing Queens, New York, the son of Esther and
John Williams, Sr. His father was a jazz drummer who played with the
Raymond Scott [3] Quintet.
In 1948, Williams moved to
Los Angeles with his family. Williams attended
North Hollywood High School and graduated in 1950. He later attended the
University of California, Los Angeles and studied privately with composer
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.
[4] In 1952, Williams was drafted into the
United States Air Force, where he conducted and arranged music for the
Air Force Band as part of his duties.
After his service ended in 1955, Williams moved to
New York City and entered
Juilliard School, where he studied piano with
Rosina Lhévinne.
During this time he worked as a
jazz pianist at New York's many studios and clubs. He also played for composer
Henry Mancini: The session musicians were John Williams on piano, Rolly Bundock on bass,
Jack Sperling on drums, and Bob Bain on guitar—the same lineup featured on the "
Mr. Lucky" TV series. Williams recorded with Henry Mancini on the film soundtracks of
Peter Gunn
(1959),
Charade
(1963), and
Days of Wine and Roses
(1962). He was known as "Little Johnny Love" Williams in the early 1950s, and served as arranger and bandleader on a series of popular albums with singer
Frankie Laine.
Williams was married to actress
Barbara Ruick from 1956 until her death on
March 3,
1974. They had three children together: Jennifer (born 1956), Mark (born 1958), and Joseph (born 1960). His youngest son,
Joseph Williams, is the former lead singer for the band
Toto. His daughter, Jenny Williams, is a singer. He married his second wife, Samantha Winslow, on
July 21,
1980. Williams is a member of
Kappa Kappa Psi, the national honorary fraternity for college band members.
Film scoring
While skilled in a variety of twentieth-century compositional idioms, Williams' most familiar style may be described as a form of
neoromanticism,
[5] inspired by the same large-scale orchestral music of the late 19th century—especially
Wagnerian music and its concept of
leitmotif—that inspired his film-composing predecessors.
[6]
After his studies at Juilliard, Williams returned to Los Angeles and began working as an orchestrator in film studios. Among others, he had worked with composers
Franz Waxman,
Bernard Herrmann, and
Alfred Newman and fellow orchestrators,
Conrad Salinger and Bob Franklyn
[7]. He was also a studio pianist, performing in scores by composers such as
Jerry Goldsmith,
Elmer Bernstein, and
Henry Mancini (for whom he played the opening riff to
Peter Gunn
).
[8] [9] Williams began to compose music scores for television series programs in the late 1950s, eventually leading to the pilot episode theme for
Gilligan's Island,
[10] Lost in Space,
and
The Time Tunnel
.
Williams' first major film composition was for the
B movie Daddy-O
in 1958, and his first screen credit came two years later in
Because They're Young.
He soon gained notice in Hollywood for his versatility in composing jazz, piano and symphonic music. He received his first
Academy Award nomination for his score to the 1967 film
Valley of the Dolls
, and was nominated again in 1969 for
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
. He won his first Academy Award for his adapted score to the 1971 film
Fiddler on the Roof
. By the early 1970s, Williams had established himself as a composer for large-scale disaster films, with scores for
The Poseidon Adventure
,
Earthquake
, and
The Towering Inferno
; the last two films, scored in 1974, borrowing musical cues from each other.
In 1974, Williams was approached by
Steven Spielberg to compose the music for his feature directorial debut,
The Sugarland Express
. The young director had been impressed with Williams' score to the 1969 film
The Reivers,
and was convinced that the composer could provide the sound he desired for his films. They re-teamed a year later for the director's second film,
Jaws
. Widely considered a classic suspense piece, the score's ominous two-note
motif has become nearly synonymous with
sharks and approaching danger. The score earned Williams a second Academy Award, his first for an original composition. Shortly afterwards, Williams and Spielberg began preparing for their next feature film,
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
. Unusual for a Hollywood production, Spielberg's script and Williams' musical concepts were developed at the same time and were closely linked. During the two-year creative collaboration, they settled on a distinctive five-note
figure that functioned both as background music and the communication signal of the film's alien mothership. Williams employed a system of musical hand signals in the film, based on
hand signs designed by Zoltán Kodály.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
was released in 1977.
In the same period, Spielberg recommended Williams to his friend and fellow director
George Lucas, who needed a composer to score his ambitious space epic,
Star Wars.
Williams produced a grand symphonic score in the fashion of
Richard Strauss and
Golden Age Hollywood composers
Erich Wolfgang Korngold and
Max Steiner. Its main theme—"
Luke's Theme"—is among the most widely-recognized in motion picture history, and the "
Force Theme" and "
Princess Leia's Theme" are well-known examples of
leitmotif. The film and its soundtrack were both immensely successful, and Williams won another
Academy Award for Best Original Score. In 1980, Williams returned to score
The Empire Strikes Back
, where he famously introduced "
The Imperial March" as the theme for
Darth Vader and the
Galactic Empire. The original
Star Wars
trilogy concluded with the 1983 film
Return of the Jedi
, for which Williams' score provided the "
Emperor's Theme" and the climactic "Final Duel". Both scores earned Williams Academy Award nominations.
Williams worked with director
Richard Donner to score the 1978 film
Superman
. The score's heroic and romantic themes, particularly the main march, the
Superman fanfare and the love theme, known as "
Can You Read My Mind," would appear in the four subsequent sequel films. For the 1981 film
Raiders of the Lost Ark
, Williams wrote a rousing main theme known as "The Raiders March" to accompany the film's hero,
Indiana Jones. He also composed separate themes to represent the
Ark of the Covenant, the character Marion and the Nazi villains of the story. Additional themes were featured in his scores to the sequel films
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
,
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
, and
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Williams composed an emotional and sensitive score to Spielberg's 1982 fantasy film
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
. The music conveys the film's benign, child-like sense of innocence, particularly with a spirited theme for the freedom of flight, and a soft string-based theme for the friendship between characters E.T. and Elliott. The film's final chase and farewell sequence marks a rare instance in film history, in which the on-screen action was re-edited to conform to the composer's musical interpretation. Williams was awarded a fourth Academy Award for this score.
The 1985 film
The Color Purple
is one of two feature films directed by Steven Spielberg for which John Williams did not serve as composer (the other was the 1971 direct-to-television
Duel,
Spielberg's first feature film). The film's producer,
Quincy Jones, wanted to personally arrange and compose the music for the project. Williams also did not score
Twilight Zone: The Movie,
but Spielberg had directed only one of the four segments in that film; the film's music was written by another veteran Hollywood composer, rival
Jerry Goldsmith, chosen by lead director and producer
John Landis. The Williams-Spielberg collaboration resumed with the director's 1987 film
Empire of the Sun,
and has continued to the present, spanning genres from science fiction thrillers (1993's
Jurassic Park),
to somber tragedies (1993's
Schindler's List
, 2005's
Munich),
to Eastern-tinged melodramas (2005's
Memoirs of a Geisha
, eventually helmed by
Rob Marshall). Spielberg has said, "I call it an honorable privilege to regard John Williams as a friend."
[11]
In 1999,
George Lucas launched the first of a series
prequels to the original
Star Wars
trilogy. Williams was asked to score all three films, starting with
The Phantom Menace.
Along with themes from the previous movies, Williams created new themes to be used as leitmotifs in
Attack of the Clones
(2002) and
Revenge of the Sith
(2005). Most notable of these was "
Duel of the Fates", an aggressive choral movement utilizing harsh
Sanskrit lyrics that broadened the style of music used in the Star Wars films. For
Episode II,
Williams composed "Across the Stars", a love theme for
Padmé Amidala and
Anakin Skywalker (mirroring the love theme composed for the second film of the previous trilogy,
The Empire Strikes Back).
The final installment combined many of the themes created for the entire series, including "The Emperor's Theme," "The Imperial March," "Across the Stars," "Duel of the Fates," "A Hero Falls," "The Force Theme," "Rebel Fanfare," and "Luke's Theme" and "Princess Leia's Theme." Few composers have scored an entire series of this magnitude: The combined scores of all six
Star Wars
films add up to music that takes a full orchestra more than 14 hours to perform entirely.
In the new millennium, Williams was asked to score the film adaptation of the widely successful book series,
Harry Potter
. He went on to score the first three installments of the franchise. As with his
Superman
theme, the most important theme from Williams' scores for the film adaptations of
J. K. Rowling's
Harry Potter
series, dubbed "Hedwig's Theme," has been used in the fourth, fifth, and sixth movies in the series
(Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
,
Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix
, and
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
), scored by
Patrick Doyle and
Nicholas Hooper respectively. Like the main themes from
Star Wars
,
Jaws,
Superman
, and
Indiana Jones
, fans have come to identify the
Harry Potter
films with Williams' original piece.
In 2006,
Superman Returns
was released, under the direction of
Bryan Singer, best known for directing the first two movies in the
X-Men
series. Singer did not request Williams to compose a score for the new movie; instead, he employed the skills of
X2
composer
John Ottman to honorably incorporate Williams' original
Superman
theme, as well as those for "
Lois Lane" and "
Smallville".
Don Davis performed a similar role for
Jurassic Park III
, recommended to the producers by Williams himself. (Film scores by Ottman and to a lesser extent Davis are often compared to those of Williams, as both use similar styles of composition.)
In 2008, Williams scored the fourth installment of the
Indiana Jones series,
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull;
he will be scoring
Steven Spielberg's future projects
Harvey
,
Lincoln
and
Interstellar
.
Harry Potter
producer
David Heyman has stated that Williams might return as composer for
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
depending on Williams' schedule.
[12]
It was recently announced that Williams will score
The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn
, the first film in the upcoming
Tintin
trilogy based on the comics by
Hergé, continuing his long-time collaboration with Steven Spielberg, while also working with
Peter Jackson for the first time.
[13] [14] [15] [16] [17]
The film is now in
post-production and the
scoring session will start in february 2010.
Conducting and performing
From 1980 to 1993, Williams succeeded
Arthur Fiedler as Principal Conductor of the
Boston Pops Orchestra. Williams never personally met Fiedler, although he did speak with him on the telephone. His arrival as the new leader of the Pops in the spring of 1980 allowed him to devote part of the Pops' first PBS broadcast of the season to presenting his new compositions for
The Empire Strikes Back,
in addition to conducting many Fiedler audience favorites.
Williams almost ended his tenure with the Pops in 1984.
[18] Considered a customary practice of opinion, some players hissed while sight-reading a new Williams composition in rehearsal. Williams abruptly left the session and turned in his resignation, reportedly due to mounting conflicts with his film composing schedule as well as a perceived lack of discipline in the Pops' ranks, culminating in this latest instance. After entreaties by the management and personal apologies from the musicians, Williams reconsidered his resignation and continued for nine more years.
[19] In 1995 he was succeeded by
Keith Lockhart, the former associate conductor of the
Cincinnati Symphony and
Pops.
Williams is now the Laureate Conductor of the Pops, thus maintaining his affiliation with its parent, the
Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), resident of Symphony Hall in the Massachusetts capital. Williams leads the Pops on several occasions each year, particularly during their Holiday Pops season and typically for a week of concerts in May. He conducts an annual Film Night at both Boston Symphony Hall and
Tanglewood, where he frequently enlists the
Tanglewood Festival Chorus, official chorus of the BSO, to provide a choral accompaniment to films (such as
Saving Private Ryan
).
Williams makes annual appearances with the
Los Angeles Philharmonic at the
Hollywood Bowl, and took part as conductor and composer in the orchestra's opening gala concerts for
Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2003.
Williams has written many concert pieces, including a symphony, Concerto for Horn written for Dale Clevenger, principal hornist of the Chicago Symphony, Concerto for Clarinet written for Michele Zukovsky (Principal Clarinetist of the
Los Angeles Philharmonic) in 1991,
[20] a sinfonietta for wind ensemble, a cello
concerto premiered by
Yo-Yo Ma and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood in 1994, concertos for the flute and violin recorded by the
London Symphony Orchestra, tuba, and a trumpet concerto, which was premiered by the
Cleveland Orchestra and their principal trumpet Michael Sachs in September 1996. His bassoon concerto,
The Five Sacred Trees, which was premiered by the
New York Philharmonic and principal bassoon player
Judith LeClair in 1995, was recorded for Sony Classical by Williams with LeClair and the London Symphony Orchestra.
He is also an accomplished pianist, as can be heard in various scores in which he provides solos, as well as a handful of European classical music recordings.
In addition, in 1985, Williams composed the well-known NBC News theme "The Mission" (which he performs in concert to signal the final encore), "
Liberty Fanfare" for the re-dedication of the
Statue of Liberty, "We're Lookin' Good!" for the Special Olympics in celebration of the 1987 International Summer Games, and themes for the 1984, 1988, 1996, and 2002 Olympic games. His most recent concert work "Seven for Luck", for soprano and orchestra, is a seven-piece song cycle based on the texts of former U.S. Poet Laureate
Rita Dove. "Seven for Luck" was given its world premiere by the Boston Symphony under Williams with soprano
Cynthia Haymon.
John Williams also made a rare appearance on the
BBC in 1980 to explain what life as a composer is like and how demanding it is to get everything just right.
In April 2005, Williams and the Boston Pops performed "The Force Theme" from
Star Wars
opening day in
Fenway Park as the
Boston Red Sox, having won their first
World Series championship since 1918, received their championship rings.
In April 2004, February 2006, and September 2007, he conducted the
New York Philharmonic at
Avery Fisher Hall in
New York City. The initial program was intended to be a one-time special event, and featured Williams' medley of Oscar-winning film scores first performed at the previous year's
Academy Awards. Its unprecedented popularity led to two concerts in 2006—fund-raising gala events featuring personal recollections by
film directors
Martin Scorsese and
Steven Spielberg. Continuing demand fueled three more concerts in 2007, which all sold out. These featured a tribute to the musicals of film director
Stanley Donen, and had the distinction of serving as the opening event of the New York Philharmonic season.
[21]
Notable compositions
Film scores
The Olympics
below =
Problems listening to this file? See media help.
. He has been nominated for 21 Golden Globes and 59 Grammys. With 45 Oscar nominations, Williams currently holds the record for the most Oscar nominations for a living person.
's 59. Forty of Williams' Oscar nominations are for
. All five winners are in the former category. (More correctly: The first Academy Award for Fiddler on the Roof was for Musical Adaptation.)
. In 2004 he received a
. He also won a
. His scores for
also appeared on the list, at #6 and #14, respectively.
In 2003, the International Olympic Committee accorded Mr. Williams its highest individual honor, the Olympic Order.