John Williams

John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932) is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career that has spanned seven decades, he has composed some of the most popular, recognizable and critically acclaimed film scores in cinema history. Williams has won 25 Grammy Awards, five Academy Awards, seven British Academy Film Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards. With 53 Academy Award nominations, he is the second-most nominated person, after only Walt Disney. His compositions are often considered the epitome of orchestral film music and he is considered among the greatest composers in the history of cinema. Williams has composed many of his film scoring works for frequent collaborators Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, and other directors such as Chris Columbus, Oliver Stone, Richard Donner, Irvin Kershner, Sydney Pollack, Alfred Hitchcock, Mark Rydell, Mark Robson, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Robert Altman, and J. J. Abrams. He has a very distinct and recognizable sound that mixes romanticism, impressionism and atonal music with complex orchestration. Williams has been associated with director Steven Spielberg since 1974, composing music for all but five of his feature films, and George Lucas, with whom he has worked on both of his main franchises, Star Wars and Indiana Jones. His early work as a film composer includes The Killers (1964), How to Steal a Million (1966), Valley of the Dolls (1967), and Goodbye Mr. Chips (1969). He has received five Academy Awards for Best Original Score for his work on Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977), E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982), and Schindler's List (1993). Williams has composed for many popular films including the Star Wars saga, Superman, the first two Home Alone films, the Indiana Jones films, the first two Jurassic Park films, and the first three Harry Potter films. Other memorable film scores from his collaboration with Spielberg include Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Hook (1991), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Catch Me If You Can (2002), War of the Worlds (2005), War Horse (2011), Lincoln (2012), and The Fabelmans (2022). Williams has also composed numerous classical concertos and other works for orchestral ensembles and solo instruments. He served as the Boston Pops' principal conductor from 1980 to 1993 and is its laureate conductor.