John Towner Williams was born in the Flushing section of Queens, in New York City, on February 8, 1932, the oldest of Esther and Johnny Williams. His father, a jazz drummer, had been one of the original members of the Raymond Scott Quintet and later was a percussionist with the CBS Radio Orchestra and NBC's "Your Hit Parade". Music played an important part in the lives of John, his brothers Jerry and Don, and his sister Joan. From the age of seven he studied piano, and he also learned to play the trombone, the trumpet, and the clarinet. In 1948 the family moved to Los Angeles, where the father free-lanced with film studio orchestras.

After graduating in 1950 from North Hollywood High School, where he played, arranged, and composed for the school band, Williams took courses in piano and composition at UCLA and studied privately with pianist-arranger Bobby Van Eps. He composed his first serious work, a piano sonata, as a nineteen-year-old student and later a wind quintet never finished or performed. Drafted in 1952, Williams was assigned to the United States Air Force, and as a part of his tour of duty he conducted and arranged music for service bands.

After his discharge in 1954, he spent a year at the Julliard School of Music as a piano student of Rosina Lhevinne. During his stay in New York he worked at various nightclubs as a jazz pianist. Later he was accompanist and conductor for singer Vic Damone, played for composer Alfred Newman at Twentieth Century-Fox, and was engaged as a pianist with Morris Stoloff's Columbia Pictures staff orchestra in Hollywood, of which his father was then a member. His talent for orchestration was soon recognized and encouraged by the studio composers. Meanwhile, he continued his serious music studies in Hollywood with Arthur Olaf Anderson and with the noted Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

Beginning with his first screen credit, for Because They're Young (Columbia, 1960), Williams' career as a composer of film scores gathered steady momentum. Prized for his versatility, he wrote music for jazz combos, dance bands, and symphony ensembles. Among the films for which he composed scores were I Passed for White (Allied Artists, 1960); Bachelor Flat (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1961); The Secret Ways (Universal, 1961); Diamond Head (Columbia, 1962); Gidget Goes to Rome (Columbia, 1963); John Goldfarb, Please Come Home (Twentieth Century Fox, 1964) The Killers (Universal, 1964); None but the Brave (Warner, 1965); How to Steal a Million (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1966); Not With My Wife You Don't (Warner, 1966); The Rare Breed (Universal, 1966); The Plainsman (Universal, 1966); Penelope (1966), A Guide for the Married Man (Twentieth Century Fox, 1967); and the Dick Van Dyke vehicle Fitzwilly (United Artist, 1967), to which he contributed the song "Make Me Rainbows."

Beginning on the late 1950's, Williams was also involved in television. He appeared as a jazz pianist in the Detective series Johnny Staccato, and he both composed and conducted for such shows as "M-Squad", "Wagon Train", and "Chrysler Theatre". Other television programs that benefited from his musical talent included the "Kraft Suspense Theatre", "Lost in Space", "Convoy", "Time Tunnel", "Checkmate", "Playhouse 90", "Tales of Wells Fargo", "Gilligan's Island", and "Land of the Giants". The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences honored him with two Emmy awards for outstanding achievement in musical composition: for the NBC TV Special Heidi, presented in the 1968-69 season; and for Jane Eyre (noted as being Williams’ favorite score next Close Encounters of a Third Kind), shown on NBC's "Bell System Family Theatre" during 1971-72.

Returning to film, other films with music by Williams included Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (National General, 1969); The Story of A Woman (Universal, 1970); The Cowboys (Warner, 1972); Pete 'n' Tillie (Universal, 1972) The Paper Chase (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1973); The Long Goodbye (United Artists, 1973); The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (MGM, 1973); Conrack (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1974), and then in 1974 a young director by the name of Steven Spielberg came to John Williams after being moved by his score to The Rievers to score his new movie, Sugarland Express. Williams agreed and little did he know, that this was the beginning of one of the greatest film composer/director relationships and collaborations in motion picture history.

In 1974 he continued with Earthquake (Universal); The Eiger Sanction (Universal, 1975), Alfred Hitchcock's last film Family Plot (Universal, 1976); Midway (Universal, 1976); The Missouri Breaks (United Artists, 1976); Black Sunday (Paramount, 1977); Superman (Warner, 1978); and the The Fury (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1978). Critical notice of the scores, although often perfunctory in film reviewing, at times recognized the music's important contribution of the success of a film. For example, Pauline Kael, in her book When the Lights Go Down (Holt 1980) called Williams' music for the The Fury "as apt and delicately varied a score as a horror movie has ever had,... otherworldly, seductively frightening."

Recognition also came through the many Academy Award nominations (thirty-six to date) he garnered for music he wrote or arranged, just mentioning some of his earlier scores, beginning with the musical direction on Valley of the Dolls (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1967), and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (MGM, 1969), on which he also served as music director; The Rievers (National General, 1969); Cinderella Liberty (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1973), which featured his songs with lyrics by Paul Williams (no relation); Images (Columbia, 1972), for which he created eerie, dissonant sound effects appropriate to the psychological theme; the adaptation for the Sherman brother's Tom Sawyer (United Artists, 1973); and the Twentieth Century-Fox disaster movies The Poseidon Adventure (1973) and The Towering Inferno (1974), both for producer Irwin Allen.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented Williams with his first Oscar in April 1972 for his adaption of the music for the screen version of the Sheldon Harnick-Jerry Bock musical, Fiddler on the Roof (United Artists, 1971). He received his second Academy Award in March 1976 for his original score for Jaws, his second movie with Steven Spielberg, which was a blockbuster movie. The main theme for Jaws was written as a "sea symphony" with a "Melvillian motif." It's soundtrack recordings brought him a Grammy award that same year. In April 1978, Williams obtained his third Oscar, winning top honors for the best original score, for director George Lucas' little movie Star Wars (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1977) in a competition that included another one of his works, the score for his third movie with Steven Spielberg, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Columbia, 1977), among the year's Oscar Nominees.

His Fourth Oscar was for Spielberg's E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982, Universal). And lastly so far he has been awarded a fifth Oscar for Spielberg's masterpiece Schindler's List (1993, Universal). Star Wars also brought Williams three Grammy awards in 1978. Its music was designated the year's best motion picture or television score; it's main theme was cited the best instrumental composition; and its London Symphony Orchestra soundtrack recording, conducted by Williams, won honors as the best pop instrumental recording. The sales for the soundtrack were record breaking. Never before was there an orchestral soundtrack which sold so many copies.

Williams had revived the film music in the late twentieth century, just like they were back in the days of Erich Korngold, Maurice Jarre, Bernard Herrmann, Miklos Rosza, and others. In 1979 Williams won Grammy awards for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in the best original score and best instrumental composition categories. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association honored Williams with Golden Globe awards for his scores for Jaws in 1976 and Star Wars in 1978. Since the initial Star Wars concert by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the Hollywood Bowl in November 1977, a number of orchestra have featured the music. When the Oregon Orchestra held a Star Wars concert in January 1978, it packed 12,000 people into the Portland Coliseum.

Commenting on the soundtrack recording for Star Wars, Steve Simels wrote in High Fidelity (September, 1977): "Williams is no innovator..., but he has a wonderful ear for endearingly hackneyed tropes of Hollywood film scoring." John Won Rhien observed in the Chicago Tribune (January 27, 1980) that "Williams' scores have the same lushly Romantic flavor that characterizes the work of Dimitri Tiomkin, Franz Waxman, Alfred Newman, and other greats with whom he served his apprenticeship." And Charles Gerdhart, who conducted the National Philharmonic's recording of the Close Encounters score for RCA Records Classic Film Scores series, called that composition "an excursion into serial writing and almost all forms of tonality of the highest imagination" and noted that its futuristic sounds were "produced by imaginative use of orchestra... rather than electronic gadgetry."

Of course Williams went on to write music for the other two Star Wars films, The Empire Strikes Back (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1980) and Return of the Jedi (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1983). The trilogy was released as a box set and individually on VHS and laserdisc in 1994, and in 1997 they were once again enjoyed the center of attention as a result of their Special Edition face-lifts and re-releasals into theatres. Each tape in the 1994 set contained an interview with George Lucas, conducted by Leonard Maltin. On The Empire Strikes Back video, Leonard Maltin asks Lucas, "Tell me how you first met, and worked with John Williams.", Lucas replies "I had known Steven Spielberg for a long time, up to this point, and we were talking about the film real early on when I was writing the script. And I said, I want a classical score, I want the Korngold kind of feel about this thing, it's an old fashioned kind of movie, and I want that grand, soundtrack that they use to have in movies. And he said, the guy you have to talk to is John Williams, he did Jaws, which I love, he's the greatest composer who ever lived, you've got to talk to him, and so I did, and it was really Steven who introduced us and recommended him. So I talked to him, and he said, Ok, he was interested, and so he did it, and he's a dream to work with, he's a most wonderful collaborator."

In recent years, producers and directors have been growing increasingly aware of the importance of music in films. "Today the film composer is a star," producer Robert Evans told Charles Higham of the New York Times (May 25, 1975). "The audience doesn't know it is being turned on by music, but a good score can grab an audience and hold it... Music is the most underrated single contribution to pictures today." In line with that view, director Steven Spielberg adopted an entirely new approach to Williams' score for Close Encounters. "In many instances," Spielberg has explained, "John wrote his music first, while I put the scenes to it much later."

Williams was thus allowed much more freedom than was usual for a composer, and he enabled Spielberg to use the music as inspiration for certain visual effects. "John became more than just a composer for hire." Spielberg pointed out. "He was a creative collaborator in all phases of post production, spending every day for fifteen weeks in the mixing studio and editing rooms." An example of what Spielberg meant was seen, or heard rather, in E.T. The Extra Terrestrial; the track "Adventures on Earth" was actually a cue composed first, and didn't go along with the way Spielberg shot the picture. He liked the music so much, that he actually decided to re-edit the movie to make it go along with music. Sort of the opposite of what film composers usually do.

John Badham, who directed Dracula for Universal (1979), has provided some insight into the way that Williams composed the score for that film. When Williams saw the first rushes of Dracula, he confessed to Badham that he had never seen a vampire movie, and the director was delighted that Williams approached his assignment without preconceptions of "the kind of ketchup and thunder music that prevails in the horror film genre." For several weeks Williams worked at the piano, constantly viewing and reviewing Dracula as he composed.

Contrasting the writing of film scores with other forms of musical composition, Williams told Charles Higham, as quoted in the New York Times (May 25, 1975): "Film scoring may be very rewarding, but it's also agony. Film composers are not their own masters. They are working for corporations. You accept that as part of the job." In an interview with Irwin Bazelon for his book Knowing the Score, Williams discussed the positive and negative aspects of record company’s exploitation of title songs and other film music. "The commercial part of me says something has to do some business, and the music-selling business is not altogether a bad thing." he observed. On the other hand, Williams suggested to Bazelon that one reason why so few composers of serious music work in films might be frustrated over the lack of control over the final product, which often includes as little as half of what the composer has written and is seldom a faithful representation of a composer's work.

As we came into the 1980's Williams' poured out more wonderful scores. These included the Spielberg pictures 1941 (Universal, 1979), Raiders of the Lost Ark (Paramount, 1981), and it's sequels: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. And not forgetting two Spielberg films, Empire of the Sun (Universal, 1987) and Always (Universal, 1989).

Other works from the 80's included Heartbeeps (1981), the only movie in the 80's to so far never have seen a soundtrack release of some sort; Yes Giorgio (1982), for which he wrote a love theme and song "If We Were In Love" performed by Luciano Pavarotti; Monsignor (1982), The River (1984), Spacecamp (1986), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), The Accidental Tourist (1988), and Oliver Stone's (a director with whom he would work with again) Born on the Fourth of July (1989).

Williams has conducted orchestras for the soundtrack recordings of all of his own works (with the exeption of a few early scores), and over the years he has also undertaken assignments for conducting light classical music with the symphony orchestras of such cities as Atlanta, Dallas, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles.

After the death, on July 10, 1979, of the legendary Arthur Fielder conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, a Committee for the Future of the Pops embarked in a search to find a new conductor who could build on the Fiedler tradition and maintain the financial strength of the ninety-five year old orchestra, which consists if the members of the Boston Symphony without its twelve principal players. As the source of about one-third of its income, the Pops has been a major factor in keeping the Boston Symphony solvent.

By the Autumn of 1979 the search for a successor to Fiedler had narrowed down to five candidates. They included, in addition to Williams, the long-time assistant conductor of the Pops, Harry Ellis Dickson, the Cincinnati Orchestra conductor, Erich Kunzel, the orchestra leader and television personality, Mitch Miller, and the conductor of the Symphony of Flint, Michigan, John Covelli. On January 10, 1980 the Boston Symphony management announced that it had concluded a three-year contract with John Williams, who became the nineteenth conductor of the Pops. Although it was generally agreed that no one could totally replace the revered Fiedler, the choice of Williams was greeted with enthusiasm. Announcing his plans for the Pops, Williams asserted that Fiedler's legacy would be "carefully nurtured" but indicated that there would be considerable innovation. "Our country is bursting with gifted young people" he told Ernest Leogrande of the New York Daily News (January 18, 1980). "We ought to try on a once-a-week or once-a-month basis to introduce a new piece and contemporize the repertoire as much aspossible."

Williams' first concert as conductor of the Pops, before a standing-room-only crowd at Carnegie Hall in New York City on January 22, 1980, was hailed by critics, including John Rockwell of the New York Times, who observed: "The crisply efficient performances he elicited from the orchestra suggested that the Pops chose wisely." When on April 20, 1980 Williams made his debut at Boston Symphony Hall, his program -- featuring such celebrities as violinist Isaac Stern, actor Burgess Meredith, and robot C-3PO conducting the Star Wars theme -- charmed both audience and critics. With that concert Williams launched the Pop's program for the year, including its twelve-week season of concerts from May through July, as well as a series of appearances at the Tanglewood Music Festival and a special Christmas-week program of seven concerts.

Williams had announced plans to continue the live concert series on the Public Broadcasting Service network begun by Fiedler and to expand record opportunities for the Pops. As permitted by his contract, he continued to compose for motion pictures, but with a reduced output; the reduced output though didn't mean lack of good output as you can see by film scores from the 80's which were previously mentioned. He also took on guest conducting engagements with other orchestras and to continue composing new orchestral works. Undisturbed by the reduction in income that his movie from Hollywood to Boston entailed, Williams assured John Von Rhien of the Chicago Tribune (January 27, 1980): "My sole motive is musical -- to keep the continuity of great orchestra having a great tradition, and vitalize it as much as I can, I would frankly do it for nothing."

So by December 1993, after holding position as conductor-in-residence for 12 years, Williams stepped down to return to a larger output in film and serious composition. A farewell concert was given to him for his work in the orchestra; it aired on PBS, and is sometimes still played. Before he retired in the later years with the Pops, he also gave us the scores to the films Stanley & Iris (1990); Presumed Innocent (1990); Home Alone (1990); Spielberg's Hook (1991); Oliver Stone's JFK (1991); Ron Howard's Far and Away (1992); and the sequel to Home Alone, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992). After retiring he did the scores to Spielberg's Jurassic Park (Universal, 1993) and Schindler's List (Universal 1993), for which he won as Oscar.

In addition to working for motion pictures and television, Williams made his mark as a composer of serious music. Whether commissioned to write them or done for other purposes, these include: Prelude and Fugue (1965), his Essay for Strings in 1966 and his Symphony No. 1 written in the same year, dedicated to his long time Hollywood associate André Previn (a second Symphony followed of which not much is known); a Sinfonietta for Wind Instruments (1968); a Nostalgic Jazz Odyssey (1972); Jubilee 350 Fanfare composed for the 350th anniversary of the city of Boston in 1980; Fanfare for a Festive Occasion (1980); Pops on the March (on the request of Arthur Fiedler; but the work was not completed until after his death in 1981); "America, the Dream Goes On" (1982 with lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman); Esplanade Overture (1983); Liberty Fanfare composed for the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty (1986); Hymn to New England (1987); "We're Lookin' Good!" a march dedicated to the Special Olympics in celebration of the 1987 International Summer Games; Fanfare for Michael Dukakis (1988); To Lenny! To Lenny! for Leonard Bernstein’s 70th birthday (1988); Winter Games Fanfare written for the 1989 Alpine Ski Championships in Vail, Colorado; Celebrate Discovery for the 500th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America in 1990; Fanfare for Prince Philip (1992); Sound the Bells for the wedding of Crown Princess Masako of Japan (1993); and Variations on Happy Birthday in 1995 for a Tanglewood concert celebrating three birthdays (Seji Ozawa's 60th, Itzhak Perlman's 50th and Yo-Yo Ma's 40th). His seven concerti are written for flute (1969), violin (1976, dedicated to his late wife Barbara Ruick ), tuba (for the 100th anniversary season of the Boston Pops in 1985), clarinet (for Los Angeles Philharmonic principal clarinetist Michele Zukovsky in 1991), cello (1994 for Yo-Yo Ma), bassoon (inspired by the poetic works of Robert Graves and written in 1995 for the 150th anniversary of the New York Philharmonic for its principal bassoonist, Judith LeClair) and trumpet (in 1996 for the 100th Anniversary of the Cleveland Orchestra). The widely known Olympic Games themes were written by Mr. Williams on three occassions. In 1984 he wrote Olympic Fanfare, and in 1988 he did Olympic Spirit and most recently wrote Summon the Heroes for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. He has also written four themes for NBC, most notably the NBC Nightly News theme entitled, "The Mission Theme".