Will

Yeah good catch on that -- I think the Adams/Goldwasser exchange really clinches it. Confirms beyond doubt that this wasn't simply the Julliard president misspeaking or something like that.

Truly fantastic news! So it seems likely that the sketches Mark Graham was proofing last week were, in fact, for Spielberg's film.

I'm cautiously optimistic that JW will do the whole thing. Maybe this take will age poorly ... but what little we've heard suggests he's still actively composing to at least some extent. And while a film score certainly would impose demands above those from a concerto or concert piece, I assume that the workload for this one would be far less than Dial of Destiny or the SW sequel trilogy. As noted above, the film could be sparsely spotted, and even if not, it's hard to imagine anything approaching the nearly wall-to-wall music -- combined with tons of rewrites -- that made JW's recent non-Spielberg scores so taxing (and, in the case of DOD, resulted in extensive copy & pasting from prior scores). That said, obviously I don't mean to minimize the burden writing an entire film score places on a 90+ year old. We'll find out soon enough I suppose.

If anything, I feel like this speculation is relatively tame compared to what one used to see here. I have fond memories of debating the meaning of cryptic social media posts by JKMS and others during the lead-up to TFA.

Awesome! Thanks for at least confirming I’m not crazy. (Of course, even if this is new JW music, that doesn’t necessarily prove it’s a film score, but Graham hashtagged his post as “#filmmusic,” so that makes me optimistic.)

I don't want to get people's hopes up without reason, but this from Mark Graham this morning is quite intriguing: https://www.instagram.com/markgrahamcreative/reel/DQBlhaUiLg1/?hl=en It might be overly optimistic, but I wonder whether these could be JW's sketches for Spielberg's film... Obviously, there is no direct evidence of that in the post, but how many composers still write paper sketches? (Does Silvestri?) We know that on Spielberg's recent films JW generally sent his sketches directly to Graham, without any additional orchestrator... (When the camera zooms in on the pages at the end, you can sort of see the outline of what's on the other side, and they look at least plausibly like the format of JW sketches to me, though it's really hard to tell from such a quick look.)

Super fascinating! (This inspired me to go listen to Raymonda, which I wasn't familiar with.)

Yeah possible it's just a coincidental similarity, since Glazunov's work (besides the violin concerto) doesn't seem very well-known, and was probably even less so in the pre-Internet days.

Lovely to hear some of the more unusual selections, like Tree of Life, Argo, and Little Women! As a side note, it's interesting that "The Queen" on the album seems to include music from The King's Speech, even though the main theme from that score also gets a separate track. "The Rehearsal" is a wonderful cue, though, so no complaints from me!

Hear a little bit of Star Wars in this Glazunov passage!

Well, this is exciting! As much as I'd like it to be confirmation that JW is scoring Spielberg's new film, the "Ocean Forests" hypothesis is probably more plausible. But glad to see regardless.

Concert now available on demand here! https://www.classicalwcrb.org/show/the-boston-symphony-orchestra/2025-05-27/lockhart-leads-the-pops-in-john-williams-film-night

This is a very nice score! Desplat's Jurassic World is still pretty decisively the best overall score of the year (so far) in my book. But Giacchino's main theme is an earworm (especially the infectious brass counterpoint), and "Fantastic Four, First Cue" -- with its pulsating energy -- has to be one of the best cues of the year. Great to hear such fun, optimistic scoring in this day and age. Not sure it quite reaches the heights of Tomorrowland, but it sure comes close. One highlight moment:

Late to the party on this, but really enjoying the new concerto. (I like a lot of JW's concertos, so I'm not sure how I'd "rank" this one, but it certainly shows that JW remains in top form -- not that there was much doubt about that!) As is often the case with JW's concertos, this one took a number of listens for me to fully appreciate, but having listened numerous times over the past week, I've been very impressed. My favorite part is definitely the first half of the final movement, which brings the joyful energy of Soundings (and that piece's wonderful cousin, Just Down West Street). It's a bit of a shame that this exuberance doesn't last throughout the rest of the movement, although the more gritty, jagged passages in the final minutes are exciting in their own right (recalling JW's action cues and maybe also the finale of the Tuba Concerto). Several of the quieter passages are also gorgeous, especially in the second movement. I hear shades of Stanley & Iris, Accidental Tourist, etc. Beautiful! Some of the more improvisatory-sounding sections for solo piano are still hard for me to really get into, but I often find that to be true with cadenzas. Overall, an excellent addition to JW's oeuvre, one which I'm sure I'll be returning to frequently. Having listened to most of JW's work so many times, it's always surreal to add a new piece to the rotation! We are so fortunate to continue being able to do that.

Program notes: https://www.bso.org/works/john-williams-concerto-for-piano-and-orchestra