New Williams interview - Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Nov 1st 2010

[Naïve Old Fart 9,533]

For a really good, in-depth interview, checkout June/July 1978 Films and Filming magazine, where J.W. talks about "Superman", "The Fury", Bernard Herrmann, "Jaws 2", "Quintet", Robert Altman, and "a new musical with Steven Spielberg"...

And here it is:

http://mahawa.jw-music.net/misc/interview/elley.htm

It's still probably the best interview ever done with JW. A must-read for any true JWfan.

In 1993, one of the British Sunday papers ran an interview with J.W, under the heading "Hollywood's Top Scorer". Can anyone find it?

[indy4 155]

Interesting that he's "writing almost every day." I wonder if these are the projects we all know about, or if it's other music not intended to ever be released.

I also felt bad for him at first to think he can't enjoy listening to music, but I figured he probably gets whatever joy we get from listening from writing (not the same type of joy, but probably a roughly equal amount).

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Considering how little he composes for film these days, I'm sure everything he writes on a daily basis is stuff never heard. John Powell on the other hand... his early music for film and television, and early career demos are littered with underdeveloped themes heard later throughout his career. It's pretty neat actually.

[indy4 155]

It'd be awesome to someday get these JW sketches recorded and released.

[filmmusic 1,829]

For a really good, in-depth interview, checkout June/July 1978 Films and Filming magazine, where J.W. talks about "Superman", "The Fury", Bernard Herrmann, "Jaws 2", "Quintet", Robert Altman, and "a new musical with Steven Spielberg"...

And here it is:

http://mahawa.jw-music.net/misc/interview/elley.htm

It's still probably the best interview ever done with JW. A must-read for any true JWfan.

That's an excellent interview! i read it just yesterday.

(Imagine if John Williams had made the Alien music as he said in the end).

Anyway, does anyone have a clue about that scholarly article he mentioned about the 5 notes that are used in the Close Encounters theme and their profound meaning?

i'm trying to find it in the net with keywords, but I haven't come up with anything.. He says it mentions also Mahler, Strauss and Padre Martini.

[TownerFan 4,983]

Concerning the JW concert with the Pittsburgh Symphony, I found this other interview from last November which I think slipped under our radars:

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/ae/music/s_707872.html

Nothing earth-shattering, but there are a couple of interesting nuggets: the violin quartet he wrote for Cho-Liang Lin (which will premiere this summer at LaJolla Music Festival) will be a combination of violin, cello, clarinet and harp; and the upcoming Oboe Concerto is written for Boston Pops principal oboist Keisuke Wakao, as I predicted a few months ago.