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Man, seeing (on the internet) 90-year-old John Williams completely healthy and making a surprise appearance to conduct a new piece, was the highlight of my week, specially after years of Covid. He surely spent very well the pandemic by writing new music. John Williams is my hero!

From the SW Facebook page

I would never have thought that Star Wars makers would give Williams an opportunity to write a concert piece on a topic of tragedy and focus on the psychology of a traumatized character. This is the kind of unconditional dramatic seriousness that Williams's blockbuster scores has often been accused of lacking in contrast to operas or, say, Herrmann's scores. But even with that being the case in this assignment, the choice of Wagnerian/Brucknerian tonality and rhythm is not something I expected from Williams, certainly not to that extent. Always a step ahead of us he is.

I was there in that room and definitely cried. I’ve seen the maestro live many times mere feet away, but being caught off guard with a sudden performance by him, and with the debut of a major new theme no less, was quite something. When I last saw him in Pittsburgh last month, I thought DC next month would be the next performance of his I’d be at. Just wow.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=0vkzQDimiaA https://music.apple.com/us/album/obi-wan-from-obi-wan-kenobi-single/1625952537 https://tidal.com/browse/album/230714253 https://open.spotify.com/album/2rP5W8xXmYH2cKTuZVgPUG?si=gEfJUfTpQhu5DOPT2rcsvw https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B27LNPXJ https://soundcloud.com/johnwilliams-official/obi-wan-from-obi-wan-kenobi https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/album/obi-john-williams/perxq7jduorta It does not appear to be on 7Digital or HDTracks at the moment.

Sometimes dreams and Twitter petitions do come true… John Williams and me at the Kenobi premiere

So, there’s now John Williams Star Wars music from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s: six different decades!

I love how the melody is basically all in C minor but when we finally get some tonic chords in the 2nd statement of the theme, they're C major chords. I hear it as a new take on the Force theme's major chord at the end of its first phrase, the "hope" that shines through the minor-key darkness.

I just can't over the fact that Williams in his late 80's and early 90's is composing some of his best tracks EVER .Pretty mind boggling. Galaxy's Edge Symphonic Suite The Rise of Skywalker The Adventures of Han The Rebellion is Reborn And now this. The majesty of this track is off the charts

Now https://open.spotify.com/track/0UvXARxghc7E5grZSpGArl?si=J4unb5qUSHaLGy0RJD-PiA&utm_source=copy-link

My thought stems from the one about a more general trend how years of being publically compared to the classics by friends and strangers alike might have affected JW. He has already been a chief defender of Herrmann, Korngold, Al Newman, and others as early as the 1970s "neoclassical" revival. And not just covertly so: there is an apocryphal story how Williams allegedly announced "this one is for Korngold" before conducting one of the cues in The Phantom Menace (Panaka and the Queen's Protectors music). I think that the number of old masters that he has felt protective about (at least once literally, with a patronage over a Haydn manuscript), has grown since. Around the time of writing The Force Awakens he mentioned Beethoven's scores laying at his night stand. At AFI 2016 he said that Beethoven would have shunned Hollywood. By 2020 Beethoven had changed his mind and suddenly in Williams's view he probably would have composed for films and only would have disliked hearing his music cut and edited. Around the same time Williams went on to say that he would return to Vienna if they showed him more original manuscripts of Haydn. In 2020 he went on radio with Dudamel with a suggestion of playing Beethoven's pastoral. A year later, when asked about the famous Schindler's List quote, he said his own first thought of who were those "better composers" had been Mozart, and Spielberg's might have been Brahms. Also in 2021 Williams visited the Thomas-Kirche in Leipzig and reacted "now I can die" after Jurassic Park was sounded in his honour on Bach's old organ. He is said to have wanted to write a theme for Obi-Wan, because he had never written one This just seems like a perfect opportunity (now or never) to have that one deliberate homage to Wagner, too. Or not Maybe it is only my mind in which all that has been planted

I had a crazy work day and am finishing with a headache, and so… I haven’t listened yet! It’s killing me to wait, but I’ve always wanted my first time to be, you know… special. This deserves a proper listen on decent speakers with a clear head, so I’ll come back tomorrow. I will say, what an amazing treat for the lucky people attending. I’m astonished he agreed to make that appearance. Like no one near to him said, “You know John, you don’t really have to do this if you don’t want. “ The man is not slowing down, he’s speeding up! Owes us nothing, and he’s giving us his all.

This new theme is a perfect blend of the old and new Star Wars music reminding me very much of the Rise of Skywalker suite in its approach. Taking the Force theme as a starting point Williams sort of deconstructs it and weaves a new theme out of it that is more personal and indeed moodier music for Obi-Wan Kenobi, heroic but tempered at the same time. I love how the suite opens with that solo horn, evoking the Binary Sunset and Force Theme mood wise, drawing an immediate connection in the mind of a seasoned Star Wars (music) fan and then begins slowly spinning these different variations on the material from determined to elegiac and even heroic. Great stuff. I saw some comments how this theme wasn't hummable enough for some listeners but I couldn't disagree more. Williams has such a knack for writing memorable melodies and this is no exception. He certainly knows when to be direct and grab the ear of a listener. I haven't seen the show but usually you have to be doubly more direct with a TV show main titles when you aren't afforded time to present your music in long form.

I think the theme itself, the melody, is quite brilliant. It manages to capture the lonely melancholy, as Holt notes, but it also manages to easily be used as an action/adventure heroic theme. Luke's theme has heroic optimism, Benny's has a worldworn heroic feel.

We can always rely on KM for the most pessimistic take whenever we get new Williams music. I wish you could enjoy things.

#OneLastMine Seeing this and knowing that we're getting one last Ford/Williams combo is so surreal. It finally is starting to feel real. Let the hype begin.

Beautifully said. If this is the last new Star Wars music we ever get from this man, what a mesmerizing and deeply felt way to go out. We really do not deserve him. New JW music sometimes feels to me like the only truly and thoroughly decent thing to come out of this wretchedly flawed century. I savored those few minutes watching him conduct that suite.

Amazing, innit? This means John Williams gave us new Star Wars music in his 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s! The man is 90 years old, and Star Wars was released 45 years ago earlier this week, so he's now life longer since Star Wars was released than he did before it

There’s a short woodwind/vibraphone note at the very beginning that’s present on the live performance but not this recording.

WOW! On YouTube now too:

Yes! I would say that it's almost certainly in 12/8 rather than 4/4, at least after the horn solo intro (and maybe not including the contrasting middle section). The reason I say that is that Williams seems to write in slowish compound meters when he's expressing something to do with sorrow, which certainly fits the bill here, but there's also Jedi Steps (12/8), Across the Stars (9/8), and even things like the main themes for Angela's Ashes (mostly 12/8) and the Book Thief (6/8), etc. And while we're talking about these ostinato figures, I'll say that one thing I think is quite different from many of his other film concert pieces is that this one is very tightly based on the descending half steps found naturally in the minor scale (on degrees 6-5 and 3-2). When I heard the second and third notes of the theme's melody, I thought it was simply an appropriate expression of sounding forlorn with the 3-2 scale notes. Then it happened again in the 3rd bar (on the triplet). Then I noticed that he also uses the 6-5 notes as the high notes of the theme in those first four bars. And in those funny inverted chords in the second statements of the theme, we get the bass notes of the chords as Eb-D-C-D, again playing around with 3-2. Then I heard the cadence and I was like, cool, 6-5 in the bass for a really grief-stricken sound. Then every time these ostinatos came in, I felt the composition was getting increasingly motivically tight. And I can't help but think that his intensive work for the concert hall in the past few years has made its mark in this theme, as this kind of knitting together of a piece through a repeated scale degree figure (and not even one tied to a certain rhythm) is a hallmark of more classical concert works. Normally, I wouldn't think too much of finding this or that scale degree figure, but it's foregrounded for us right in the first bar of the melody so it inhabits even the most obvious of places!

Count me among those who prefer the concert arrangement heard at Celebration to what I heard from the end credits shared (won't see the show myself until tonight). I fell hard for that concert version yesterday. That had better have been recorded by JW back in Feb and get released!

I don't read that much hyperbole in this thread. And the comparasions with classical works were not made in qualitive terms. Just a theme a lot of people enjoyed. No need to rank things or shoot down people's enthusiasm as blind fanboyism

Here's a better sounding version of the full concert:

This sounds like it was a very troubled production - at least in the score department. All the signs are there: Lots of composers credited - check Last minute announcement that some pop-singer is contributing a song - check Almost entirely wrangled together using sound banks and sampled strings - check Very short score presentation in the age of lengthy albums - check That material in the short presentation is repetitive (2x anthem, 2x Darkstar, 2x Penny) - check Lorne Balfe - check

William Ross gets credit for theme adaptation.

Release time moved up. I guess i'll hear it in the show first. LETS GO.

First look Rope Bridge Percussion Intensifies

Anyone else listening to this on repeat today instead of listening to other things you probably should be?

My first impressions are (if we are comparing one-off’s) I prefer this to Galaxy’s Edge. It’s more focused and thematically solid. This is just great. We’ve been given another gift. Just because John wanted us to have it. I am floating right now. I don’t think I realized how much I needed this.

Knowing JW, the live version was surely already revised compared to the recorded one!

Praise the lord! The concert version is released!

Less interesting than the theme itself, of course, but for the curious here's a reduction of the ostinato figures that populate JW's piece. (I am curious if anyone hears these passages, or even the whole piece, in 12/8 instead of 4/4?)

I think I'll be shot down here but to me this new theme is passable at best. In fact it's in the same mediocre league as his music for Solo and Galaxy's Edge. I can't believe how almost everyone here is waxing lyrical like they've seen the second coming of Christ or something. Even Williams' music for (the doggerell that was) Episode IX wasn't his best. I also can't understand how this 4 minute piece can be compared to the vast orchestral frescoes of the gas giants Wagner, Mahler, Bruckner & Korngold (or even Schonberg in Gurrelieder). Sorry if I offend anyone here.

Oh man, Seth Macfarlane ripped in to Fox (the tv network) at the premiere https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/seth-macfarlane-orville-new-horizons-premiere-1235154234/

Call me crazy, but I am more and more convinced that the Sword / Siegfried connection is deliberate, a result of multiple interviewers planting the idea of being connected to Wagner in Williams's head.

Glad to see so much happiness and excitement in this thread. There certainly is good reason for it! Correct me if I'm wrong, but no JWFans expected John Williams to compose the theme for this Obi-Wan Kenobi TV series... or for the Han Solo film... or for the Star Wars park. A relative few Star Wars fans expected there to be another Star Wars Trilogy, one that started just 10 years after the completion of the previous one, another trilogy of which John Williams composed all three scores. I'd say those who don't expect further Star Wars surprises from John Williams are either hopeless or naïve.

Really loving the score so far. Love Natalie's themes for Reva and Leia, and I am over the moon for Williams' Obi-Wan Theme. I hope Natalie stays in this world for awhile, she's like the bridge between Kevin and Ludwig.

The Holt stuff sucks

Oh, yeah, that's how it always starts. First there's "ooh"ing, and "ahh"ing, then later, there's "boo"ing, and shouting. Remember, ...CRYSTAL SKULL started out in just the same way. You have been warned...

I did watch this teaser, out of curiosity for what it would look like. It has this look that puts me in mind of the recent Amazon fantasy series in a way I can’t put my finger on. Could be great, but I’m going to miss the gorgeous chemical film look of the original when watching the too crisp digital image.

I am going out of my mind for this movie. I want this more than any other film. More than Decker wanted to merge with V'Ger... I want this.

It's a shame they stopped doing the "one thing" planets, like ice planet, lava planet, forest planet, sinkhole planet... That was cute. Now, they're just mostly "regular Earth in shitty weather" planets. Karol

It's a perfectly nice theme but it doesn't rank anywhere near his best. While it's reasonably memorable I'm not feeling that element that makes it an 'emotional' theme.

"Just send me cookies and I'll compose a theme for Aunt Beru."

How about this?

Whaaat, that's like, in 30 seconds? EDIT: It's live! I skipped to the end credits to hear.... It's glorious. I have to leave the house now so I can't watch the ep but can't wait.