John Williams (Official Thread)

Nora

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Biography From Wikipedia.

John Williams (born February 8, 1932) is an American composer, conductor and pianist. He is considered to be one of the greatest, most influential, and most successful film composers of all time. In a career spanning over six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in cinematic history, including the Star Wars saga, Superman, Jaws, the Indiana Jones films, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the first two Home Alone films, Hook, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, War Horse, Lincoln, Memoirs of a Geisha, and the Harry Potter films. He has had a long association with director Steven Spielberg, composing the music for all but two (Duel and The Color Purple) of Spielberg's major feature films.

Other notable works by Williams include theme music for four Olympic Games, NBC Sunday Night Football, the NBC Nightly News, the Statue of Liberty's rededication, the television series Lost in Space and Land of the Giants, and the original, not as well known calypso-based theme song to Gilligan's Island. Williams has also composed numerous classical concerti, and he served as the Boston Pops Orchestra's principal conductor from 1980 to 1993; he is now the orchestra's conductor laureate.

Williams has won 5 Academy Awards, 4 Golden Globe Awards, 7 British Academy Film Awards and 21 Grammy Awards. With 48 Academy Award nominations, Williams is the second most-nominated person, after Walt Disney. Williams was honored with the annual Richard Kirk award at the 1999 BMI Film and TV Awards, recognizing his contribution to film and television music. Williams was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame in 2000, and was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004.


Awards

John Williams has won five Academy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards. He has also been nominated for 22 Golden Globes, winning four, and 59 Grammys, winning 21. With 48 Oscar nominations, Williams currently holds the record for the most Oscar nominations for a living person, and is the second most nominated person in Academy Awards history behind only Walt Disney's 59. Forty-three of Williams' Oscar nominations are for Best Original Score and five are for Best Original Song. He won four Oscars for Best Original Score and one for Best Adapted Score (Fiddler on the Roof).

Williams has received three Emmy Awards and five nominations, seven British Academy Film Awards, twenty one 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 Kennedy Center Honors. He won a Classic Brit Award in 2005 for his soundtrack work of the previous year.

Notably, Williams has won the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition for his scores for Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, The Empire Strikes Back, E.T. The Extraterrestrial, Angela's Ashes, Munich, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The competition includes not only composers of film scores, but also composers of instrumental music of any genre, including composers of classical fare such as symphonies and chamber music.

In 2003, the International Olympic Committee accorded Williams its highest individual honor, the Olympic Order.

In 2009, Williams received the National Medal of Arts in the White House in Washington, D.C. for his achievements in symphonic music for films, and "as a pre-eminent composer and conductor [whose] scores have defined and inspired modern movie-going for decades."

Williams was made an honorary brother of Kappa Kappa Psi at Boston University in the late 1980s.


AFI

Williams' richly thematic and highly popular score to 1977's Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope was selected in 2005 by the American Film Institute as the greatest American film score of all time. His scores for Jaws and E.T. also appeared on the list, at No. 6 and No. 14, respectively. He is the only composer to have three scores on the list. Williams' scores for the following films were nominated for the list:

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
The Cowboys (1972)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Schindler's List (1993)
Superman (1978)
The Witches of Eastwick (1987)


Discography


Songs









 
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Maria

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Great stuff! :bow::bow::bow: IMO He is the best film composer ever! I love his work.
 

Maria

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Ah! And the pic is really amazing! Thanks for sharing Nora
 

LG

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Steven Spielberg once said he would be lost without his partner John Williams, who's musical scores for his movies were equally responsible for the success of the films themselves.

I've never been a huge collector of film scores, mainly because I have the movies on VHS and now DVD/Blu Ray.

He is the greatest composer of his era in my opinion, and would have been famous in any era of classical music from Baroque to the present day.
 

Maria

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Composer John Williams is to return to score Star Wars: Episode VII, it has been announced.

The Oscar-winner, who has composed all six films in the sci-fi saga, said he was "happy to be continuing to be part of the whole fun" of the franchise.

Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy confirmed the news at a Star Wars fan event in Germany.

In an interview with StarWars.com, Williams hinted he would likely use some of the music from previous films.

"I haven't seen the script, so the story is still unknown to me, but I can't image there will not be some references to the existing stories that would make appropriate use of some of the earlier themes," he said.

The composer has won five Oscars over his 60-year career for his famous film scores including Jaws, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and the first Star Wars film.

He has also been nominated for more than 40 other Academy Awards for his work on movies including Superman, the Indiana Jones films, Saving Private Ryan and most recently, Lincoln.

In April, Episode VII director JJ Abrams indicated he wanted Williams to score his film, but said it was "early days".

In his latest interview, Williams praised the director saying he was "perfectly chosen to continue George Lucas's great odyssey".

Star Wars: Episode VII is scheduled to be released in 2015.


BBC News - Star Wars sequels to be scored by John Williams
 

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