John Williams

John Williams is the composer of nearly all of the music heard in the Star Wars films. He has also composed scores for many other well known movies and older television shows.

Biography
John Towner Williams was born on February 8, 1932, in Floral Park, New York, USA. His father was a jazz drummer and percussionist in the CBS Radio Orchestra and the Raymond Scott Quintette. After moving to Los Angeles in 1948, he attended the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles City College, where he studied orchestration under MGM musical associate Robert van Eps and was privately tutored by composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

In 1952, he was drafted into the United States Air Force, spending the next two years conducting and arranging music for Air Force bands. Afterwards, he went to the famous music school Juilliard in New York, where he was able to improve his piano performance skills under the tutelage of the renowned Madame Rosina Lhevinne. Later, he returned to Los Angeles and worked as a piano player for film studios. In 1956, he became a staff arranger at Columbia Pictures, and then at 20th Century Fox. His combined dream of music and film were merged.

As "Johnny" Williams, he composed music to such classical TV series like Wagon Train, Gilligan's Island, and Bachelor Father. These works paved the way for him to Irwin Allen's Lost in Space.



He achieved success with None But the Brave (1965), followed by an Oscar nomination for Valley of the Dolls in 1968. Four years later, he won the Oscars for Best Music, Scoring Adaptation, and Original Song Score for Fiddler on the Roof. Much of what he worked on won him awards and nominations. He became one of the most popular composers and was mentioned with talent equal to Jerry Goldsmith, John Berry, and Elmer Bemstein. He had six nominations within five years, among them two double-nominations in 1969 and 1972 for the films Goodbye Mr. Chips, The Reivers, Images, The Poseidon Adventure, Cinderella Liberty, and Hell Tower.

In 1974, he met Steven Spielberg, then just a novice director, who asked him to write music for The Sugarland Express. For their next film, Jaws, Williams created frightening compositions that convincingly expressed the approach of the shark and set a basic feeling for the film. John Williams was pivotal to the huge success of the movie, which earned him his first Oscar Award. Since then, he has won Academy Awards for E.T., Schindler's List, and Jurassic Park.

In 1977, he composed the music for Star Wars, which turned out to be a huge success. Star Wars became the best selling score-only soundtrack of all time and won him yet another Oscar. The lush sound of the London Symphony Orchestra made the music and the space-war story memorable.

Williams is also the composer for the resounding compositions for the Olympics. Williams has composed music for four of the Olympic Games held in the last 26 years. They are:

* "Olympic Fanfare and Theme" – 1984 Summer Olympics, Los Angeles * "The Olympic Spirit" – 1988 Summer Olympics, Seoul o Commissioned by NBC Sports for their television coverage. * "Summon the Heroes" – 1996 Summer Olympics, Atlanta, Georgia o Written in commemoration of the Centennial of the Modern Olympic Games. * "Call of the Champions" – 2002 Winter Olympics, Salt Lake City, Utah

With 46 Academy Award nominations to date, Williams holds the record for the most Oscar nominations for a living person.

Williams's son, Joseph Williams, chose a musical career like his father. The two worked together on Return of the Jedi and Attack of the Clones.