John Williams

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 secondmost nominated person after Walt Disney and is the oldest Oscar nominee in any category at 91 years old Williamss 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 ET the ExtraTerrestrial 1982 and Schindlers List 1993 Other memorable collaborations with Spielberg include Close Encounters of the Third Kind 1977 the Indiana Jones franchise 19812023 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 19901992 and the first three Harry Potter films 20012004 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 Bowls 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 highestgrossing films at the US 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 Williamss score to Star Wars first on its list AFIs 100 Years of Film Scores his scores for Jaws and ET 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 CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia