![]() "If you take the American songbook, which probably goes from 1910 to 1950, those songs had to be orchestrated and arranged to get to be Bing Crosby, to get to be Frank Sinatra." "Some people can arrange so beautifully," he says. This unique skill, of taking an existing piece of music and redesigning it for a specific ensemble or occasion, is a distinct art. The first Oscar he ever won was also for arranging in 1971 for the score for Fiddler on the Roof. Williams' first Academy Award nomination was for arranging- adapting the score for Valley of the Dolls in 1968 from tunes written by none other than Previn. "When I was like a teenager, maybe 14, 15, I was kind of a nerdy kid that would go into the books and look and say, 'How is this orchestration? Why is it there?,'" Williams remembers. I was fascinated with the orchestra - never dreaming I would write music for an orchestra." This was like, 'Eureka!' you know? What a magical thing to be able to do." It has to be written up a tone.' (Some instruments are tuned to different keys.) So, he gave me some manuscript paper, and I went up a tone, and we played together. My father explained to me, 'Well, a trumpet is in B-flat. "He came over to play with me and I began to play the song, and he played - and it was terrible. "I can remember the very first time I had a little piano piece, playing at home, and the kid across the street's parents bought him a trumpet," he says. He formed a band in high school that would play sorority dances and eventually big-time nightclubs like the Cocoanut Grove - and he did his own charts and arrangements of pop tunes of the day done in the style of classical composers. John Williams conducts Anne-Sophie Mutter and an orchestra of Los Angeles musicians for the album Across the Stars, available via Deutsch Grammophon.īefore he ever did, though, John Williams was an arranger. And I marveled about how the flutist was sitting there for seems like five minutes and she didn't play a note, and then suddenly she played. And I was playing the piano, but I could hear a French horn over here, and something else over there. ![]() "I would go have my piano study on Saturday morning, and then go down to CBS Studio where he was playing," Williams says. They sat side by side on a couch in a quiet room after a recording session for Across the Stars.īack in those days, "Johnny" Williams was a jazz piano fiend, and his dad, Johnny Sr., was a session drummer who played on film and TV scores at CBS. That's where I spoke with Williams and Mutter. Previn, who died earlier this year, got his start in the music department at MGM - which is now Sony Pictures Studios. Other cellists would not play it.' 'No, no, no, I want to play it. "I had the same thing with Yo-Yo, and also Itzhak ," he says, "That you write something for them - and Yo-Yo especially - I said, 'Please tell me if it's too hard. That was the first time I became aware of this genius." (Note: Star Wars was released in the U.S. And there John kind of arrived in his music, in 1978 - Star Wars. "It was gorgeous surroundings, but really not much to do other than playing the instrument, playing some soccer, and going into the meadows and the forest. "I grew up at the Black Forest, where Germany, Switzerland, and France meet," Mutter explains. The Star Wars universe alone has given us dozens of earworms, and one super fan of that music is star violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. Spielberg and Lucas gave the composer the canvases that made him a household name: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Schindler's List - films that produced some of the most recognizable, beloved melodies of the 20th century. At 87 years old, he was born before Elvis Presley, and he's worked with everyone from Astaire to Alfred Hitchcock to Yo-Yo Ma to, of course, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Williams has more American cultural reminiscences than you can shake a baton at. "I once said to Fred Astaire, 'Isn't it wonderful what the Gershwin brothers did for you at RKO?' " John Williams recalls. John Williams (left) and Anne-Sophie Mutter at a recording session at Sony Pictures Studios for Across the Stars available via Deutsch Grammophon.
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