John Williams

Known for SoundBorn 1932-02-08 (age 94)Queens, New York City, New York, USA

John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932) is an American composer and conductor. In a career that has spanned seven decades, he has composed some of the most popular, recognizable, and critically acclaimed film scoresin cinema history. He has a distinct sound that mixes romanticism, impressionism and atonal music with complex orchestration. He is best known for his collaborations with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and has received numerous accolades including 26 Grammy Awards, five Academy Awards, seven BAFTA Awards, three Emmy Awards and four Golden Globe Awards. With 54 Academy Award nominations, he is the second-most nominated person, after Walt Disney, and is the oldest Oscar nominee in any category, at 91 years old. Williams's early work as a film composer includes Valley of the Dolls (1967), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), Images and The Cowboys (both 1972), The Long Goodbye (1973) and The Towering Inferno (1974). He has collaborated with Spielberg since The Sugarland Express (1974), composing music for all but five of his feature films. He received five Academy Awards for Best Score for Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Schindler's List (1993). Other memorable collaborations with Spielberg include Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), the Indiana Jones franchise (1981–2023), Hook (1991), Jurassic Park (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Catch Me If You Can (2002), War Horse (2011), Lincoln (2012), and The Fabelmans (2022). He also scored Superman (1978), the first two Home Alone films (1990–1992), and the first three Harry Potter films (2001–2004). Williams has also composed numerous classical concertos and other works for orchestral ensembles and solo instruments. He served as the Boston Pops' principal conductor from 1980 to 1993 and is its laureate conductor. Other works by Williams include theme music for the 1984 Summer Olympic Games; NBC Sunday Night Football; "The Mission" theme (used by NBC News and Seven News in Australia); and the television series Lost in Space, Land of the Giants and Amazing Stories. Among other accolades, he has received the Kennedy Center Honor in 2004, the National Medal of the Arts in 2009 and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2016. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1998, the Hollywood Bowl's Hall of Fame in 2000 and the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 2004. He has composed the score for nine of the top 25 highest-grossing films at the U.S. box office. In 2022, Williams was appointed an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II, "for services to film music". In 2005, the American Film Institute placed Williams's score to Star Wars first on its list AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores; his scores for Jaws and E.T. also made the list. The Library of Congress entered the Star Wars soundtrack into the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Description above from the Wikipedia article John Williams, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.Read more

Movies & web series

Leonard Bernstein Centennial Celebration at Tanglewood

The 'E.T.' Journals

John Williams: Live in Vienna

Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord

When Star Wars Ruled the World

Bloodthirsty Hawk

John Williams in Tokyo

Jurassic World: Chaos Theory

Ennio

Jaws 2: A Portrait by Actor Keith Gordon

Schindler's List

Disclosure Day

SP FX: The Empire Strikes Back

Star Wars: The Bad Batch

Acme Air

Music by John Williams

For the Empire

Saving Private Ryan

The Empire Strikes Back

Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi

AFI's Master Class - The Art of Collaboration: Steven Spielberg and John Williams

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Catch Me If You Can

The Skywalker Legacy

Star Wars

Star Wars: The Magic & the Mystery

In the Teeth of Jaws

Catch Me If You Can: Behind the Camera

Timeless Heroes: Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Darth Maul Returns

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Jurassic Park

Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy

The Making of The Empire Strikes Back

The Fabelmans

Previn and the Pittsburgh

Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Return of the Jedi

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Spielberg

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

The Book of Boba Fett

Disney Gallery / Star Wars: The Mandalorian

Memoirs of a Geisha

Redcap

The Book Thief

Taking Flight: The Development of 'Superman'