TownerFan

Thank you!

According to the musicians roster, De Rosa didn't play on this. It was either James Decker or Richard Perissi. However, Vince was 1st chair horn on Star Trek TMP and boy was he prominently featured on that one. Vince was never credited as featured soloist on any JW score, but he was principal on virtually everything from the late 1960s until The Last Crusade in 1989, so whenever you hear a French Horn solo in any of the scores recorded in LA during that time frame it was Vince. The ones in E.T. are perhaps the most stirring. Personally, I love the Earthquake main title:

Another legendary studio musician left us. The great Vince De Rosa died yesterday at the venerable age of 101. He has been Hollywood's premier French Horn player for over forty years, playing on countless film scores, including many by John Williams. He was Principal Horn on such scores as The Cowboys, Earthquake, The Towering Inferno, Jaws, Close Encounters, E.T., just to name a few ("I can honestly say that what I know about writing for the French horn, I learned from Vince De Rosa," said John Williams). He's considered to be the most heard French Horn player of all time as he also played on zillions of television gigs and record dates. He wasn't just a musician, but a true legend, and a great human being as told by anyone who knew him. https://www.hornsociety.org/ihs-people/honoraries/26-people/honorary/78-vincent-derosa

https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2022/07/15/joann-turovsky-podcast/

No film crew or cameras were present at the 1977 recording sessions of Star Wars at Denham. Lots of pictures were taken though, you can see quite a few of them printed as contact sheets in the booklet of the 1993 Arista anthology boxset. You can find several of them online as well.

JW is known for not being too attached to single works. However, given the fact that he always conducts the Imperial March in his concerts and that he often said that Yoda's Theme is one of his favourite themes, I guess we can say with a good level of certainty that he's quite proud of the work he did for this film.

Beautiful. Tom has a fantastic sound.

For Williams, Sheridon played 1st flute from the early 1970s until the late 1980s (Louise Di Tullio became principal in 1989 on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), so he was there for most the big ones recorded in LA during that era Sheridon was highlighted by JW on The Towering Inferno: On Jaws (this is probably my favourite moment): Some of his most stirring solos for JW are for E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial OST album arrangements: But the biggest one he got was the unaccompained cadenza on "The Seduction of Sukie" in The Witches of Eastwick: Sheridon played for virtually all the greats, including Max Steiner and Alfred Newman. He got many solos when working for Lalo Schifrin, including the world-famous solo for the Mission: Impossible TV show: He was also prominently featured on Schifrin's score for The Fox: He was truly a formidable musician, revered and beloved by the whole community. He was notoriously famous for his unassuming attitude even when playing the most challenging part. Some musicians said that he rarely uncrossed his legs while playing . In 2019, he was celebrated by his peers for a special event at Zipper Hall in Los Angeles, where he also performed several pieces. Robert Townson did a lovely pre-concert talk featuring all the greatest Hollywood flute players (Louise Di Tullio, Jim Walker, Geri Rotella, Paul Fried, David Shostac) celebrating Sheridon and his musicianship:

Flute legend Sheridon Stokes has died. He was one of the most revered and beloved studio musicians of all time, having performed for 50+ years with virtually all the great film composers in many popular films. He was John Williams’ preferred principal flute for 20+ years, starting in the 1960s. He has beautiful solos in some of JW’s most beloved scores including Jaws, E.T. and The Witches of Eastwick. In the early 1970s, Sheridon also premiered Williams’ Flute Concerto at UCLA. I had the privilege of knowing Sheridon as he has been one of the guests on The Legacy of JW podcast and also joined the LA musicians video tribute we did last year. He was a generous, kind and fun person. We stayed in touch until recently and he was a lovely man other than being a terrifically talented musician. He will be missed, but his playing will live forever. https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2021/01/18/sheridon-stokes-podcast/

John is modest enough to avoid even the slightest sense of self-importance when writing for the concert hall. During the recent interview with Gramophone, he even said that he does not consider the Violin Concerto No.2 very much like a traditional concerto, but more like a suite for violin and orchestra, causing the interviewer to remark that the piece is absolutely a concerto in its fullest sense. I think form is absolutely important for Williams, but he never constraints himself, especially when writing for the concert hall. Sure, anyone might say if it makes sense to write a traditionally styled symphony in the 21st century, as much as it does writing a piano concerto. As you said, Williams thinks first about the person he's writing to before anything else (if he would ever tackle a symphony, he might do it by writing for a group of people he knows intimately well, like the BSO or the LA Phil), but it's also a chance for him to stretch a different set of muscles, so he would also think about what he might contribute in terms of style, substance, form and expressiveness, like he always does when writing concert music. It could be anything and he might call it whatever he prefers, in my book. I'd just love to hear a multi-movement symphonic piece where his imagination can go unbridled as far as he wants, without worrying of edits, sound fx or dialogue. I think Soundings is indeed the closest to such a thing. It's not about value, but it's about a chance of expressing yourself in a different context, where music is the first and solely thing that matters. Personally, I'm not of the camp who sees any piece of music as a vehicle for storytelling. Music can exist just for the sake of itself, i.e. an organized collection of sounds driven by the intellect of somebody who wants to express an idea or an emotion through a specific language. We can listen to Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony and picture "scenes of country life" as marked on LvB's score. But we can also just focus on the sounds and get inside the music without associating an image in our head, as much as Beethoven did when he wrote it. That's the beauty of music, it can express multitude of things at the same time. The Quidditch Match is a terrific, exciting and fanciful piece of music, constructed with the greatest sense of drama, architecture and musical coherence. I believe it can be performed in concert as is without changing too much. But it's a piece that was meant to fulfill a very specific need, i.e. accompany the scene of a film. Virtually all of what you hear was dictated by something that wasn't decided by the composer, but by the film itself. It's a different thing, and again, it's not about aeshetic/artistic value per se. It's about context and purpose.

Sure, I too would probably have swapped the first half of Eye to Eye (aka Goat Bait) with The History Lesson on the original album, if it would have depended on me. Anyway, I think this is really talking about uninfluential minutiae when it comes to the overall picture. Everyone has preferences, including composers, but we live in an era where we have access to all the music for most of the things. I just enjoy what I have without worrying too much about what this or that could or should have been.

And now you can listen to them, so it's really a non-issue

You may like or not what the composer preferred, but generally what goes on the album has also to do with satisfaction about the actual performance and what the composer believes is better to be listened outside the film context. In the case of the original Jurassic Park album, Williams built a varied and lengthy program that represents the score very well, in my opinion. Of course we want to hear everything especially in the case of these highly popular films tied to childhood memories etc., and a lot of people obsess over this or that cue etc., and that's why these archival editions exist in the first place, so we really live in the best of eras for soundtrack fans.

A film score is not a symphony. Williams certainly wrote symphonically for many films (Star Wars, Superman, Harry Potter), but a film score is inevitably subjugated to a series of preconditions that put musical structure underneath the film's needs. The film is always king. This doesn't mean that a film score is necessarily inferior to a symphony from a pure musical standpoint, of course. We can talk about the importance (or not) of form and structure all day long, but a symphony is generally an opportunity for a composer to unleash all of his/her musical imagination and knowledge without boundaries or preconditions, save for the ones that are set by the composer. I would really love to hear JW tackling a symphony and despite I will treat this item just as a wild rumor, I would not be surprised if he's thinking of writing one. I mean, he just announced he's finally writing a piano concerto at 90, so why not a proper symphony as well?

I think the shortened version of the End Credits was an edit originally conceived as the "B-side" of the CD single: https://www.discogs.com/it/release/4125665-John-Williams-Theme-From-Jurassic-Park Then JW or someone at MCA decided it was good enough to close out the OST album as well.

Oh, sure thing, especially those musicians who were literally playing in dozens of sessions for film, tv, record dates etc. within the same week. A lot of their memories can be faulty as well.

Yes. Such a fantastic memento.

John's music is indeed part of the DNA of Star Wars and the fact that it's still so relevant speaks volumes about how crucial this is to its identity. Of course Star Wars needs to evolve, so it's a complete right of the actual owners to explore new paths also musically (see The Mandalorian). I think one of the issues of this Obi-Wan show was perhaps the uncertainty that lingered even very late into the process of either traveling a new road or go on a familiar path (at least according to what Holt said to the press). The end result is a strange mixture of both. I would only add that a "modern" approach feels kind of awkward in a Star Wars setting because it sounds like the music only stays on the surface instead of going deeper emotionally, which is the actual value of a film score. In her interview, Holt mentions the "big sweeping Star Wars sound that everybody wants", but in my opinion the success of Williams' approach cannot be reduced just to the big symphonic sound. It's how the music is shaped throughout the narrative, how it plays a dramatic role in the context of the story and its characters and how he always uses a symphonic vernacular to add dimension and depth to what we're seeing.

The list was provided by the LSO archivist thanks to Tim Burden and in their record they have the actual members of the orchestra who played on those sessions. All the ethnic instrumentalists and synth programmers were not LSO players, but freelance musicians handpicked by Horner himself (Hinnigan & Taylor of Incantation on ethnic winds, Kazu Matsui on shakuhachi, Ian Underwood on synths) and hence credited as soloists in the booklet. There are musicians who swear to remember to have played on scores despite not being listed in the actual AFM records. There are gaps and inaccuracies in their archives as well, I guess.

Thank you all for the truly nice words! Very happy you appreciated! P.S.: @80sFan, your profile pic is amazing! Which year that was?

On July 5 you will decide if this new edition will be something on which you want to spend your hard-earned money or not. Don't jump to any conclusions too early. As others have already pointed out, the JPJW Collection was one of LLL's all-time best-sellers and it makes sense to have it back in print while also offering a few improvements. FYI, there won't be a specific podcast about it on The Legacy of JW for the time being.

Thank you a lot for you kind words, Conor!

A few inaccuracies have been amended. I hope all of you are enjoying both the video and the article!

Duly noted! Thanks for the note. Article amended.

To prepare for tonight's premiere, I put down an overview of the 40+ years history between JW and the BSO/Boston Pops: https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2022/06/30/boston-calling-video/ See you in a couple of hours!