John Williams makes memories. That’s been his art, as the most important film composer of the past half-century. His scores for the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies, Superman, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, his themes for NBC News, various Olympic Games, and many, many more are indelible features of contemporary global culture. When you hear something that sticks with you, it impresses a pattern that will forever return you to the time when you heard it—the images on the screen, what you felt. Williams has given you something to remember a part of your life by.
When you talk with musicians who have worked with Williams—such as Emanuel Ax, who joins the New York Philharmonic in the New York Premiere of the composer’s Piano Concerto at the end of this month—you hear their own stories about the man, and also get an idea of just how profound Williams’s influence can be. Talking with the composer over the phone from his home in Los Angeles reveals how his own memories form new ones for audiences, both in the cinema and the concert hall.
The Piano Concerto, which Ax and the New York Philharmonic perform February 27–28 and March 1 and 3, is “for my late wife”—Barbara Ruick, who died in 1974 at age 41—“who suffered through all the piano lessons.” Personal and musical memories mix, especially around the three jazz pianists who inspired the piece: Art Tatum, Bill Evans, and Oscar Peterson. “I thought about their physical relationship with the instrument,” Williams explains. He remembers Tatum’s ultra-virtuosic technique and artistic aplomb: “He had a sound like Rachmaninoff, but it wasn’t loud. His keyboard seemed to be 120 keys!” Of the poetic, seraphic Evans he recalls, “When you watched him approach the piano, it didn’t seem like he was going to play it but listen to it.” Peterson, dazzling and mercurial, had the composer thinking about “speed, virtuosity, and invention.”
Segue to Ax, who was eager for the concerto. Williams recalls that when word got out he was writing it, “One of the first calls came from Manny: ‘I hear you’re writing a piano concerto; will you give it to me?’” The pianist relates: “I asked him to let me play his concerto because I had heard his movie music for many years and knew that he was a wonderful pianist. He is a living legend to me, so the chance to work with him was irresistible.” Philharmonic Principal Trumpet Christopher Martin knows this well. He recalls that “one of my earliest childhood memories, in the theater, was seeing Star Wars.” He agrees with the idea that, through it, Williams collaborated with him on part of his childhood. Later, as a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Martin collaborated with Williams on the inside, playing on the soundtrack recording for Lincoln. “It was a wonderful week,” Martin recalls, “very quiet, intimate. He wrote a few nice trumpet solos for me,” one of which became the separate piece With Malice Toward None. Martin points out a deeper connection: Williams’s Air and Simple Gifts, composed and played for Barack Obama’s first inauguration, is also part of American memory.
Both Martin and Principal Bassoon Judith LeClair—who was the soloist in the premiere of Williams’s The Five Sacred Trees in 1995 and later recorded it—point to Williams’s humility. He flew her out to Los Angeles, where the two worked together on the score. “It was an amazing experience,” she says over a phone call. “We worked on every single note. There wasn’t any ego there from him. He makes you feel like you’re the only person in the world.” Ax says the same: “I was able to visit him a few times and played for him — he made some small changes as we went along. He is unfailingly kind and supportive, and has a truly extraordinary ear, so these sessions were really lessons for me.” As for Williams, the magical mix of images and sound is never far from his mind, the “phantom empire,” in critic Geoffrey O’Brien’s words, that lives in our memories. But the composer is also always thinking about the future. “I’d like to come back in 50 years,” Williams adds, “and see what young people are doing with music and media."
A Musical Friendship
As a composer, John Williams’s history with the New York Philharmonic began with The Five Sacred Trees, a bassoon concerto commissioned for the Orchestra’s 150th anniversary celebrations. In the realm of concert music, the Orchestra’s subsequent performances have included his Tuba
Concerto in May 2016, with Principal Tuba Alan Baer as soloist; For New York in 2016; and Liberty Fanfare (performed on the 1986 Central Park concert marking the Statue of Liberty’s centennial). Williams’s film music has dominated the NY Phil’s live-to-film presentations, which have included E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first two Harry Potter films, Home Alone, and four films from the Star Wars saga: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and The Force Awakens.
Also acclaimed as a conductor, Williams has led this Orchestra in eight performances, beginning with his debut in February 2004 through to the April 2023 Spring Gala that celebrated him. In addition to conducting his own compositions, he has made a point of celebrating other film composers, as in the 2006 tribute to Bernard Herrmann, when he was joined onstage by two notable hosts: Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.
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