I adore John Williams. I love his music, I love how much he loves his work, I love what a dignified yet warm presence he has on the podium and in interviews. He seems to me like a cool grandfather who just so happens to have created some of the most memorable, enduring and downright brilliant movie music ever composed.
Steven Spielberg put it so well when he said “without John Williams, bikes don’t really fly, nor do brooms in Quidditch matches, nor do men in red capes. There is no Force, dinosaurs do not walk the Earth, we do not wonder, we do not weep, we do not believe.”
The great composer turns 90 on Tuesday 8th February and at Scala Radio we’re celebrating in style. We’ve been running a listener poll to discover your favourite John Williams score, and we’ll count down the top 10 across the day from 10am, after a special edition of Screen Time in his honour. There’s still time to vote and it’s probably a good thing that as Programme Manager, I can’t take part, because I’ve been struggling to narrow my favourites down to a top 3 – although I’m pretty sure Raiders of the Lost Ark would be in there.
Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo presented special programmes in the run-up to his birthday, which, as you can imagine, were loads of fun to produce. Mark and I decided against the obvious choice of simply playing the biggest hits, wonderful though they are, and instead dug a bit deeper into Williams’ extensive back catalogue to select some lesser-played gems including Heartbeeps, Diamond Head and Black Sunday.
We also handed over the music choices to some of our favourite film composers and asked them to tell us about their favourite John Williams score. Huge thanks to Rachel Portman, Harry Gregson-Williams, Nainita Desai, Lorne Balfe, Anne Dudley, Segun Akinola, Michael Giacchino, Patrick Doyle, Mychael Danna, Brian Tyler and Germaine Franco for taking the time to tell us how John Williams has inspired them, and for sharing their love for scores as diverse as The Witches of Eastwick, Memoirs of A Geisha and JFK.
For Simon Mayo’s Essential Albums, which follows on directly from Mark Kermode’s show, we focused on John Williams’ non-film music, including his original cello compositions, his 2002 American Journey album, his musical influences and his work as a conductor, reflecting his long-standing partnerships with the Boston Pops Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra.
This led me to re-visit a special programme I produced in 2020, The Music of John Williams, hosted by one of the LSO’s first violinists Maxine Kwok. It’s available on our subscription service Scala Radio Premium and explores what it’s like to perform John Williams’ scores, both in the concert hall and recording studio. Maxine and her LSO colleague Carmine Lauri shared their memories of recording Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. It’s fascinating hearing them talk about sight-reading his scores, and I love Carmine’s description of members of the orchestra racing to the control room to watch the playback of the film with the music.
Maxine also spoke to top violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, who’s recorded and performed with John Williams, and they discussed the technical challenges of playing his scores. A particular highlight is Anne-Sophie’s description of his “highly cerebral music, which is very often over-looked because the tunes are part of our DNA, so we assume they are simple, which they are not!”
Anne-Sophie will be talking to Mark Forrest at 10.30am on Monday 7th February about her work with John Williams, and Mark will be joined by film composer Thomas Newman (1917, Skyfall, American Beauty) at 10.30am on Tuesday. Alfred Newman, Thomas’ father, was Head of Music at 20th Century Fox from 1940 to 1960 and worked closely with John Williams, and one of Thomas’ first orchestration jobs was on Return of the Jedi. I’m really looking forward to hearing Newman sharing his stories about his personal and professional connection with Williams.
All in all, plenty to enjoy if you want to celebrate the great man! We’re also planning something else which I can’t reveal right now, but listen to Scala Radio on Tuesday 8th February to find out! In the meantime – and please forgive this shameless plug – you may wish to read about John Williams’ amazing creative collaboration with Steven Spielberg here.
