‘The New Yorker’ Interviews John Williams

Williams is a courtly, soft-voiced, inveterately self-effacing man of eighty-eight. He is well aware of the extraordinary worldwide impact of his Star Wars music—not to mention his scores for Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., the Indiana Jones movies, the Harry Potter movies, the Jurassic Park movies, and dozens of other blockbusters—but he makes no extravagant claims for his music, even if he allows that some of it could be considered “quite good.” A lifelong workhorse, he resists looking back and immerses himself in the next task. In the coronavirus period, he has been at home, on the west side of Los Angeles, focusing on a new concert work—a concerto, for the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, which will have its premiere next year. – Full interview at The New Yorker