JOHN Williams is a musical composer and conductor most known for writing the bone-chilling theme music for the film Jaws.
Williams is one of the most distinguished names in music and film, having taken home 25 Grammy Awards and five Academy Awards.
Who is composer John Williams?
Williams is the son of a jazz band percussionist father and Bostonian mother.
He attended high school in California, enrolled in the Armed Services, and played piano in the US Air Force Band.
He later studied at Juilliard, the famed performing arts school in New York City.
Early in his career, he played piano on music scores for several movies and television shows.
What theme music did John Williams write?
Williams' earliest composition of note was the theme music to the pilot episode of the comedy series Gilligan’s Island.
In the early 1970s, Williams scored a string of lucrative disaster movies and cemented his name as one of the best in the business.
Most read in Entertainment
He collaborated with Steven Spielberg on the latter's theatrical directorial debut, a crime movie featuring Goldie Hawn titled The Sugarland Express.
The two would team up again for Spielberg’s summer blockbuster Jaws and forever altered the psyche of moviegoers and swimmers alike with crescendoing violins.
Two years after receiving an Academy Award for best original score for Jaws, Williams took home another statuette, this time for George Lucas’s space opera Star Wars.
Williams found continued success through the 1980s and 1990s, scoring two more Star Wars films as well as other Spielberg classics like ET: Extra-Terrestrial, the Indiana Jones franchise, and the Holocaust-based drama Schindler’s List.
His first 21st-century hit came when he provided the original music for the first Harry Potter film.
The twinkling tune is immediately recognizable today and is one of Williams’ most magical and ethereal melodies.
What directors has John Williams worked with?
Indeed, Williams has a storied history with Spielberg and Lucas, working with the directing icons from early in their careers and through their rise into Hollywood lore.
But they are not the only directors that Williams has enjoyed a working relationship with.
Williams has scored movies for Oliver Stone, Richard Donner, and more in a career that has spanned more than five decades.
In 2008, Williams composed a song for Barack Obama's inauguration and later received a National Medal of Arts from President Obama.
Read More on The US Sun
Williams celebrated his 90th birthday on February 8, 2022.
His son, Joseph, is the lead singer of the band Toto, famous for their 1982 hit, titled Africa.
We pay for your stories!
Do you have a story for The US Sun team?
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEZqqupl6YvK57xKernqqklravucSnq2hsZmiGd3ySaK6hp12ewG6vzqanqKuVp3qru8enZLChnKG2ornSaA%3D%3D