TownerFan

AFAIK, they kept the same template used for the Disney Star Wars films, i.e. a series of 2-day sessions staggered over a period of 3-4 months, so to give JW enough time to accomodate picture changes, etc. The first two sessions were done in late June and another two were done last week after he came back from Tanglewood. I presume another set is planned for September as well.

CE3K had lots of vfx shots missing/unfinished when Williams scored the film, so he wrote to "blank" footage in several parts of the final sequence, just using timings and frame count off the cue sheet.

https://www.classicfm.com/composers/williams/john-90th-birthday-exclusive-interview/

https://tiff.net/events/the-fabelmans Duration is set at 151 minutes.

If you have a hard time grasping The Planets (which is perhaps one of the most accessible and “film-like” pieces of classical music ever written), then it’s understandable that you struggle with much more abstract compositions. The way you are expressing it, it seems that you need a clear and identifiable melodic or thematic hook to hold on to, am I correct? That’s of course more than normal, but music can evoke emotions also through colour, atmosphere and texture. It depends on how much we are open to embrace, beyond personal taste and preferences. Perhaps that has more to do with what you usually expect Williams’ music to sound like than what the piece actually is. If you expect Williams always writing in his Star Wars/fanfare mode, then you will always end up disappointed whenever he goes into another territory. As much as we tend to forget this, we all grew up being imprinted with those film scores and the memories of our childhood/adolescence attached to them are so vivid. It’s totally fine to prefer that style/vernacular over others, but following your reasoning this doesn’t mean that that is the “true Williams” and his more abstract pieces are not. Saying that the Scherzo for Piano is like a cat walking on the piano is a very unfair way to dismiss it. It’s certainly dissonant, sometimes harsh in its turnarounds, but having being written for Lang Lang there is a puckish, almost impertinent character that reveals a great deal of fun.

I love John's new running shoes Btw, it's really impressive to see how spry he looks and moves around--he gets up from that chair swiftly like a 50 years old!

Was it this? https://youtu.be/mWnPfq3C4Z4

There is no “right” or “wrong” approach when it comes to listening to any music. You should not feel lacking in knowledge or expertise if you find hard to connect with some of the above-mentioned concert works. When it comes to Williams, it’s understandable to feel this way because most of his film music (especially the most popular pieces) is so immediate and tuneful while also being sophisticated and refined in its craft, so we can relate to it very quickly and easily. Plus, most of it is associated with films that are imprinted in our memory to the point it feels part of our DNA, so to speak. Williams’ works for the concert hall (especially the concerti) belong to a very different category, they’re mostly abstract in their nature and detached to any programmatic nature (i.e. music that purposefully describes a specific picture). You should just try to sit down, listen to it and focus on how this music makes you feel (while trying also to appreciate its intrinsic musical qualities). You should start focusing on the aspects that you like or speak more directly to you. If it feels harder to grasp them, don’t feel diminished by it. Sometimes works of art need time to unlock our souls. Not everything is immediate. Back in the day I too found difficult to tune in with some of those concert works, but time really helped in finding more and more beauty in them to the point that nowadays I find them as engaging and stimulating as his film music and sometimes even more. Give yourself time ☺️

FYI, Mike offers a wide-ranging talk here, focusing on the recent reissues (E.T., JP, CE3K), but also putting the entire Spielberg-Williams collaboration in historical context. It's almost a lecture in film and film music history. I mostly listened to his brilliant observations, so you won't hear much blabbering from me Mike also took the chance to clarify some of his previous comments about future expansions and releases.

Just came back from Alagna and these recitals were absolutely magnificent. Sara Andon, Cecilia Tsan and Simone Pedroni were all on fire and these new arrangements are just incredible. Before the Sunday concert, Pedroni announced officially that these arrangements will be soon recorded in Los Angeles for a new album project celebrating John Williams' 90th birthday produced by Robert Townson. Wait till you hear them!

Duly noted and corrected. Hope you'll enjoy the interview!

Yes, that was four pianos (plus synth) played by Mike Lang, Ralph Grierson, James Newton Howard and Ian Fraser. I believe that the opening solo as heard on the album is indeed JW, but the rest was Mike Lang and Chet Swiatkowski. Sometimes is very difficult to know who exactly is playing as the musicians’ memory is often foggy and often the same cue is done by a different musician at every take. As Randy Kerber told in the podcast interview for LOJW, Williams likes to have different pianists do a take on the same piece, so it’s more than one keyboardist.

His credits are an endless list. He performed on literally thousands of recordings. His most famous solo for JW is “Banning Back Home” from Hook, but he has some really nice spotlight in Close Encounters, Sabrina and Catch Me If You Can. For Goldsmith, he did many many solos. My most favourite ones are The Russia House and The Edge. Btw, here’s a beautifully written obit by Jon Burlingame: https://variety.com/2022/artisans/news/mike-lang-dead-jazz-pianist-1235335081/

This is horrible news. He wasn’t just the consummate musician, a terrific jazzman and a true studio legend who performed in thousands of recordings, including countless film scores for the greatest composers (Williams, Goldsmith, Barry, Mancini among many others)… He was one of the most generous and kindest persons I ever had the honour to know, even just so briefly. I will be forever grateful for the generosity he showed for the interview he did for the Legacy of JW podcast. He said some lovely words I will treasure forever. RIP to a true legend.

https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2022/08/05/gloria-cheng-podcast/ Hope you'll enjoy this, Gloria is fabulous both as a musician and as a human being.

The Keisuke Wakao album arrangements (for oboe, string quartet, harp and piano) were all by Kazunori Maruyama according to the booklet (who also plays piano on the recording). Williams himself did the oboe & piano arrangement of Stepmom as a gift for Keisuke and recorded it with him at the piano. At the Alagna Festival, the Andon/Tsan/Pedroni trio will perform brand-new arrangements for cello, flute and piano penned by Simone Pedroni, plus flute & piano arrangements again by Pedroni, and the regulary published JW cello & piano suites from Schindler's List and Memoirs of a Geisha.

John Williams appeared on the podium at Tanglewood on Tuesday August 2 for the annual "Tanglewood on Parade" night at the Koussevitzky Music Shed, conducting first the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in a performance of "Just Down West Street... On The Left," and then the Boston Pops in "Hedwig's Theme" and "Fawkes the Phoenix." The Maestro looks in great shape. Nice to see Keisuke Wakao and Gus Sebring (recent guests of the BSO tribute video at TLOJW) in the band

It's certainly true that we can enjoy the cake without necessarily knowing how the cake was made. The only argument I would oppose to this is that in a field where people are valued by the outcome of their work, it feels like cheating to cover reality with smoke and mirrors. I mean, Hollywood's history is chock full of people getting credits, recognition and even accolades for work done by others, but a little more integrity would be nice to see.

Except for a few that you can count on the fingers of one hand, all current composers in Hollywood (and I mean all current composers in Hollywood) have a team of additional writers to help them through. That's how you have to do if you want to survive the pressure and get to the finish line without dying because of tight deadlines and an ever-growing level of micromanaging from big studios and now also streaming companies, especially for large productions. It's a fact however that a certain methodology has been hugely pushed and supported by top composers, getting them much more work than it would have been humanly possible and that changed the paradigm for studios as well in terms of demo reviews, deadlines, last-minute changes etc. It's a huge topic and it's virtually impossible to boil it down to a few lines. It's true that the situation changes a lot from one composer to another and you cannot put out blanket statements about how these people work. The ghostwriting aspect is another issue, but the general consensus seems that what was considered once an exception has now become a standard practice. One could argument that even in the 1940s and 50s there were teams working on a single film, but it was mostly for big musicals or projects that truly needed a lot of music. The methodology of having one composer assisted by one or two orchestrators, one music editor and supervised by the head of the music department was radically different.

First time I hear such a thing, but I highly doubt it. Williams dedicated his Violin Concerto no.1 to his late wife, that's for sure. The Sabrina theme seems more to reflect his own recollection of Audrey Hepburn, who he knew well back in the day. Williams plays the solo that opens the album ("Theme From Sabrina"), while Chet Swiatkowski is the pianist on the rest of the score.

It's a known fact that Spielberg and editor Carol Littleton used excerpts of Hanson's Romantic Symphony as part of the temp track (it was even used in the teaser trailer of the film) so it's safe to assume that JW agreed with them that it was with the right choice tonally (I guess especially for its sentimental quality) and he certainly decided to stay close to it in a few bits of the last reel. However, if we look and listen close enough, we can firmly say that it's 5% inspiration from Hanson and 95% JW's own creation. He frequently spoke about the challenge that the cue posed to him in terms of sync points, tempo and overall shape, so it's more than likely that he spent several weeks honing and crafting those final 10 minutes until the cue was perfect to his own inner ear. In the end, he settled to accept the suggestion from the temp, but it's all filtered through his own voice and personality to the point that when we listen to that piece we hear John Williams, not somebody just lifting pages from Howard Hanson and plastering them onto the film. And that's how a good film composer has to navigate through what's requested to him/her to do and what is musically congruous while not looking like he/she is cheating. Of course there are many degrees of how composers do these things and it's true that sometimes the lifts are very clear, but as someone else said above, film composers have to comply to what the filmmakers are asking and sometimes aping the temp is the only way to get out alive. Also, on a broader point, it's always kind of sad to see people in academia still banging on the same subject over and over. I realize it's a very small minority nowadays as film music is not that Cinderella of the musical arts anymore, so it's not even worth to spend time defending Williams or anyone else to the eyes of who is still carrying a prejudice against them. As someone else said, Williams looks like an easy target to these people as he's famous and successful so that he really is the perfect example of a composer carrying that stygma. However, one wonders if these people actually spend time listening to the full score of E.T. or Star Wars before launching into the tirade "Williams is a thief" etc. E.T. for example is really a lot more than those few bars that are modeled after Howard Hanson.

Pianist Simone Pedroni, cellist Cecilia Tsan and flutist Sara Andon will tribute John Williams' 90th birthday with three special chamber recitals at the Ninth Edition of Alagna Music Festival "From Bach to Williams" in Alagna Valsesia (Italy), a lovely location at the foot of Italy’s northern Alps. The performances will take place over three days from August 6 to August 8 and will feature arrangements for chamber duo and trio from some of Williams' most haunting and lyrical scores including SCHINDLER'S LIST, MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA, A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, THE RIVER, JANE EYRE and THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST among others, together with pieces from the classical repertoire by Claude Debussy, Johannes Brahms and Nino Rota. https://www.dabachawilliams.com/alagna-music-festival-2022 Full program: https://www.dabachawilliams.com/_files/ugd/1f2576_4df18884a3bd4414a9da37ab3867fb69.pdf

The article is now available on Gramophone website: https://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/article/john-williams-s-concertos-the-other-side-of-cinema-s-great-musical-genius Really beautifully written piece, with some fantastic quotes from Slatkin, Ma and Mutter.

It's Thomas Wilkins conducting. Nice, it sounds better than the previous captures, imho. I caught a lot more details.

That's substantially not true. Mike hasn't said anything like that to my knowledge, certainly not in any episode of TLOJW podcast where he was guest.