John Williams

John Williams ranks among the central architects of film composition while standing as the foremost scorer for cinema during his prime. He supplied themes for numerous record-shattering productions across Hollywood’s timeline, among them Star Wars, E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, and Harry Potter, which constitute merely a sampling from a catalog exceeding fifty Academy Awards nominations. Having begun in television during the late 1950s, Williams transitioned to steadier feature-film assignments by the early 1970s, earning notice for his powerful orchestral work on disaster epics such as The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Earthquake (1974), and The Towering Inferno (1974), together with projects alongside rising directors Robert Altman on 1973’s The Long Goodbye and Steven Spielberg on 1974’s The Sugarland Express. That alliance with Spielberg would endure across six decades. The ominous, approaching Shark Theme created for Spielberg’s 1975 Jaws and the five-note spacecraft motif from 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind—written with Spielberg’s directive that it should express “hello”—would probably have secured Williams’s position as Hollywood’s preferred composer for science-fiction-adventure-thriller material even absent the monumental triumph of Star Wars that same year, his most celebrated score. The instrumental themes drawn from Jaws, Close Encounters, and Star Wars each appeared on the Billboard Hot 100, Star Wars reaching the Top Ten. In time he gained recognition for skill with more reflective writing as well, illustrated by the Best Song Oscar nominee “Somewhere in My Memory” from Home Alone and the elegiac violin motif, rendered by Itzhak Perlman, within his Oscar-winning score for Schindler’s List (1993). Nevertheless he stayed identified across eras with his opulent, dynamic, and romantic music for alternate realms, encompassing the initial two Jurassic Park installments in the 1990s, the first three Harry Potter entries in the 2000s, and the episodic Star Wars prequels plus sequels. Entering his nineties in the early 2020s, Williams commenced work on his fifth consecutive Indiana Jones film.

Born February 8, 1932, in Floral Park, New York, Williams was the offspring of a motion-picture studio performer and traced his father’s path by pursuing music studies at UCLA and Juilliard. He first sought a livelihood as a jazz pianist before collaborating with Henry Mancini on the score for the popular television program Peter Gunn. Williams subsequently operated independently to create numerous television soundtracks for series including Playhouse 90, Wagon Train, and Bachelor Father. In 1959 he entered film with Daddy-O and devoted most of the 1960s to alternating between theatrical releases such as The Killers and The Plainsman and smaller-screen assignments such as Gilligan’s Island, Lost in Space, and Kraft Suspense Theatre.

Williams secured his initial Academy Award nomination in 1968 for Valley of the Dolls. He earned further nods in 1970 for both The Reivers and Goodbye, Mr. Chips, then captured his first Oscar two years later for Fiddler on the Roof. A succession of Academy Award nominations ensued for titles including The Poseidon Adventure, Tom Sawyer, and The Towering Inferno. By 1974 he had obtained his first best original song nomination for Cinderella Liberty’s “Nice to Be Around,” written with Paul Williams supplying the lyrics.

Across much of his career, two primary associations helped cement Williams’s singular standing in film and music. In 1974 he joined a young director named Steven Spielberg for the initial occasion on the crime drama The Sugarland Express. Over subsequent decades the pair collaborated repeatedly, frequently producing striking outcomes such as 1975’s Jaws and 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind; Williams’s gripping score for Jaws received an Oscar for original score while Close Encounters was nominated. His other recurring partner was George Lucas, commencing with 1977’s Star Wars—another best score Oscar recipient—whose stirring orchestral main theme also attained the number-ten position on the Billboard singles chart. Williams and Lucas reconvened soon afterward for 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back, the same year Williams succeeded the late Arthur Fiedler as conductor of the Boston Pops.

Reuniting with Spielberg, Williams supplied additional memorably exultant melodies for 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark and the following year’s E.T. His expansive music for the latter earned his fourth Academy Award. He returned to the summit of box-office charts with 1983’s Return of the Jedi, the third Star Wars installment. Meanwhile he scored pictures for additional directors, delivering music for releases such as 1978’s Superman and 1983’s Yes, Giorgio, the latter containing the Oscar-nominated song “If We Were in Love.” His extensive output later in the decade included contrasting Oscar-nominated scores for Spielberg: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), the World War II drama Empire of the Sun (1987), and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).

The 1990s found Williams engaged with both longstanding and fresh franchises, opening with the first Home Alone family comedy in 1990, which produced nominations for score and song (“Somewhere in My Memory,” with lyricist Leslie Bricusse). After a score nomination for Oliver Stone’s JFK and a song nomination (again with Bricusse) for “When You’re Alone” from Spielberg’s Hook, he won an Oscar for his next Spielberg collaboration, 1993’s Schindler’s List, whose evocative theme was performed by violinist Itzhak Perlman. That year also brought the debut Jurassic Park film to theaters bearing a pervasive Williams score, after which he relinquished the Boston Pops podium to Keith Lockhart following a thirteen-year tenure. The composer consented to score George Lucas’s Star Wars prequel trilogy as production began just prior to the release of his Oscar-nominated scores for the Spielberg historical dramas Amistad (1997) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace established the single-day box-office record upon its May 1999 opening.

Williams initiated work on still another blockbuster series in 2001 with the appearance of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (also known as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone). Blending sinuous, airborne melodies with a somberly grand tonal range, his first contribution to that enchanted realm earned a best original score nomination. He continued with a sequence of successive successes: Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002), Spielberg’s Minority Report (2002), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can (2002), and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2003). As the creator of multiple Olympic themes, he received the Olympic Order award from the International Olympic Committee in 2003. Films such as Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Spielberg’s War of the Worlds and Munich arrived in 2005, followed by Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull before the decade closed. Williams was presented the National Medal of Arts at the White House in 2009.

Frequent appearances among Oscar nominees persisted through the 2010s, encompassing Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin (2011), War Horse (2012), and Lincoln (2013). He garnered three additional Oscar nominations for the Star Wars sequel trilogy, beginning with 2015’s The Force Awakens. In 2016 Williams became the first composer to receive the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award. He concluded the decade with projects including the Spielberg productions The BFG (2016) and The Post (2017). Their partnership was compiled in 2017 as John Williams & Steven Spielberg: The Ultimate Collection. Two years later he also joined celebrated violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter on the album Across the Stars, which presented Mutter performing a selection of Williams’s film themes; the composer arranged the music and conducted the Recording Arts Orchestra of Los Angeles for the Deutsche Grammophon release. The ninth episode of the Star Wars saga, The Rise of Skywalker, appeared in 2019. 2022’s A Gathering of Friends found Williams collaborating with cellist Yo-Yo Ma on two concert works plus selections from his scores for Schindler’s List, Lincoln, and Munich.

Throughout their first fifty years of collaboration, John Williams scored all but five of Steven Spielberg’s films (1983’s Twilight Zone: The Movie, 1985’s The Color Purple, 2015’s Bridge of Spies, 2018’s Ready Player One, and 2021’s West Side Story). In 2023 Williams returned to the Indiana Jones series with his score for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.