All-John Williams program, January 22-25, 2026
John Towner Williams was born February 8, 1932, and lives in Los Angeles, California.
That John Williams is the most famous composer in the world, his film music familiar to billions, eclipses a bit the fact that he is a complete musician—analogous to baseball’s five-tool player, with skills as composer, arranger, conductor, concert programmer, pianist.
That last item was, in fact, first: Williams has been a pianist nearly all his life. Born in New York City, it was there he had his first piano lessons. After moving to Los Angeles with his family as a teenager and a stint in the Air Force, he returned to New York for his advanced musical training, studying with Rosina Lhévinne at Juilliard by day and playing in nightclubs by night. When he returned to Los Angeles, he established his career initially as a pianist in film studios, within a couple of years also taking on arranging and composing jobs. The stylistic variety mastered during those years laid the foundation for his celebrated ability to capture the musical essence of a film scene with a few evocative brushstrokes.
Williams refined that ability over the course of a decade with scores for television (Wagon Train, Land of the Giants) and film. He won his first Academy Award for his adaptation of the Fiddler on the Roof music for the big screen in 1972. His extraordinary 50-year partnership with Steven Spielberg began with The Sugarland Express (1974) and Williams won his first Oscar for Best Original Score for their second film together, Jaws, in 1976. His third and fourth Academy Awards for Best Original Score were also for Spielberg collaborations, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Schindler’s List. (He also won the Oscar for his score to George Lucas’s Star Wars.) Jazz, identifiable as such, has been relatively rare in his own film scores, the most notable exception being 2002’s Catch Me If You Can—of which see below. Jazz also appears more boldly in cameos—the most famous such instance being the cantina scene in Star Wars.
As Conductor of the Boston Pops from 1980-1993, Williams’s repertoire exhibited the sweep of his musical enthusiasms. Characteristic programs included his own and others’ film music, classical composers including Hector Berlioz, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Igor Stravinsky, “light” classical fare by Suppé and Johann Strauss, Jr., musical-theater composers including Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Weill, and Richard Rodgers, and performances by pop stars Johnny Mathis, Dionne Warwick, and Johnny Cash. And there was jazz: W.C. Handy, Fats Waller, Chuck Mangione, and collaborations with some of the genre’s greats: Tony Bennett, Mel Tormé with George Shearing, Oscar Peterson.
All this is to say that Williams is the sum of all these parts, and more: he continues to be inspired by the music and musicians he encounters, rechanneling those experiences into music that could be by no one else.
As Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, and Tanglewood audiences know well, throughout his career John Williams has composed concert music alongside his Hollywood activity. His early works in the concert sphere include a symphony in 1966 for André Previn (another musical polymath) and the Houston Symphony, and concertos for flute and for violin. He began writing concert music with much greater frequency after he was named Conductor of the Boston Pops in 1980 and came to know and work with principal players of that orchestra, of which he is now George and Roberta Berry Boston Pops Conductor Laureate. He has written concertos for several members of the BSO/Pops, including former BSO tubist Chester Schmitz, oboist Keisuke Wakao, violist Cathy Basrak, and former principal harp Ann Hobson Pilot, as well as for members of other notable orchestras, such as Chicago Symphony former principal horn Dale Clevenger, New York Philharmonic principal bassoonist Judith LeClair, and Cleveland Orchestra principal trumpet Michael Sachs. He has also written works for soloist and orchestra for some of the most admired virtuosos in the world, including Yo-Yo Ma, Gil Shaham, and Anne-Sophie Mutter, and most recently Emanuel Ax.
Many of Williams’s pieces originated at the BSO’s Tanglewood Festival, which for decades Williams considered a summer home-away-from-home. Yo-Yo Ma premiered his Concerto for Cello with the BSO and Seiji Ozawa for the inaugural concert of Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Hall in 1994 and his Highwood’s Ghost with Andris Nelsons, BSO Principal Harp Jessica Zhou, and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in 2018. Anne-Sophie Mutter premiered his Markings with the BSO and Andris Nelsons and his Violin Concerto No. 2 under the composer’s direction in 2021. There have been other premieres here, as well, among them his song cycle Seven for Luck, on poems by Rita Dove; Just Down West Street—on the left, written for the Tanglewood Music Center’s 75th anniversary, and his solo piano work Phineas and Mumbett, premiered by Gloria Cheng during the 2012 Festival of Contemporary Music. The most recent addition to this list is his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, premiered at Tanglewood last summer by Emanuel Ax with the BSO and Andris Nelsons.
“Joy Ride” is the third movement of Williams’s Escapades, an orchestral work derived from the jazz-infused score for Catch Me If You Can. The piece works a little like a Baroque concerto grosso—like one of Bach’s Brandenburg concertos: a smaller ensemble is featured within the larger orchestra as a solo group, only here that smaller group is a jazz combo of saxophone, vibes, and double bass. Catch Me If You Can starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks and was directed by Steven Spielberg. The music illustrates the cat-and-mouse plot of a con man on the run from the law and is the ideal reflection of the slick, stylish, Thomas Crown Affair-ish 1960s vibe Spielberg conjures in the film.
Having suggested years ago that he’d love to premiere a concerto by John Williams, Emanuel Ax finally got his wish in summer 2025 when he gave the first performance of the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra on July 26 under Andris Nelsons’ direction in the Koussevitzky Music Shed at Tanglewood. The concerto is actually Williams’s second, relatively recent work for piano and orchestra: he wrote a substantial Scherzo for Piano and Orchestra for Lang Lang in 2014, expanding it in 2021 by adding a prelude movement composed for Gloria Cheng. But this new piece is, as Maurice Ravel might have put it, a “proper concerto”—a work in the classical form of three movements, fast-slow-fast, familiar from the concertos of Mozart and Beethoven but also invoking the pianistic personalities, respectively, of Art Tatum, Bill Evans, and Oscar Peterson. Although there are no improvised passages, the solo part often provides space for flexibility of performance, for example in the cadenza-like opening of the first movement and markings of “dreamily” and “take time” to encourage the soloist toward a ruminating approach in the second. In this truly virtuoso concerto in which each movement has its challenges, the finale ratchets up the energy to another level, both for the soloist and the band.
The composer wrote the following comments about his concerto:
Composing a piano concerto was, for me, particularly challenging given the enormous canon of rich and diverse piano and orchestral masterworks created over the past centuries. Although my effort here is not a jazz piece per se, much of the impetus to write it down has been my memory of the particular “sound” produced by three legendary jazz pianists. Past this simple concept, the music is in no way an attempt to serve as a portrait of each of these artists, but merely to suggest and remember the unique artistic personalities of three men who greatly inspired me along with so many other lovers of the piano around the world.
Firstly, Art Tatum. When I was fifteen or sixteen years old, I remember a scene in a Los Angeles jazz club which welcomed underaged patrons providing they didn’t drink. I saw a large man who was clearly not sighted being carefully guided to his place at the piano. The lights were turned down so as not to offend his eyes. He seemed to be huge. His piano also seemed enormous… not with the usual 88 keys, but seemingly with twelve additional keys at either end of the keyboard, accommodating his massive reach. The size of his sound was awesome and reminded one of Rachmaninoff. He played three chords, listened, and played them again with an added note or two. He seemed satisfied and then began with a brief cadenza which served as his warm-up. The avalanche of gems that followed could hardly be imagined.
Secondly, Bill Evans. The second movement begins with a viola solo. Why? This may be because Bill was a quiet and very ethereal man who, when he approached the piano, always seemed to be less interested in playing than listening to what the piano may have to tell us. His piano eventually joins the viola, supporting Bill’s ethereal mood while further investigations ensue.
Thirdly, tall, handsome Oscar Peterson emerges, looking like an NFL wide receiver on his day off. After a brief salutation from the timpani, he begins with a bristling and famous “bebop” passage composed by whom we do not know but often attributed to Oscar and to the late Phineas Newborn, who also possessed a similar technical prowess. It serves as a reminder of Oscar’s athletic affinity, which he always displayed with taste and the most graceful control.
I’ve always so greatly admired pianist Emanuel Ax, who is universally celebrated for his technical brilliance, refined elegance and great artistic sensibilities. He is also one of the most gracious gentlemen I’ve had the privilege to know. When I first met Manny years ago, I asked him if in his travels he ever encountered a bad piano. He replied simply, “all pianos are my friends.” I had only mentioned to a few friends and associates that I might be interested in writing a work for piano and orchestra. You can imagine my surprise and delight when Manny called me to say, “if you write it, I will play it!” I could not have been more grateful and honored.—John Williams
Gil Shaham is another longtime collaborator with both the Boston Symphony Orchestra and John Williams. Having first performed with the Boston Pops when he was just 15 in 1986, Shaham made his BSO debut in 1993; he first played John Williams’s music with the BSO in 1996, performing his Three Pieces from Schindler’s List under the composer’s direction at Tanglewood and leading to a multi-year, annual collaboration there among Williams, Shaham, and the BSO. After Shaham added Williams’s 1974 Violin Concerto (No. 1) to his repertoire, Williams composed the three-movement TreeSong for the violinist, who premiered it at Tanglewood under the composer’s direction on July 8, 2000; his recording of the piece, Three Pieces from Schindler’s List, and Williams’s Violin Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra was released the following year. Apart from being premiered by the BSO, the piece has a strong Boston connection, as the composer relates:
For quite a few years, it’s been my habit to walk in the Boston Public Garden as often as I could, and it has been during these walks that I found myself stopping before a particular tree and pausing to admire it.
The tree is a beautiful specimen of the Chinese dawn redwood, or metasequoia, and over time my fascination for it grew into a full-fledged infatuation. I later learned that the dawn redwood dates from the Mesozoic era and until as recently as the 1940s it was thought to be extinct. Fossils of its presence in the deep past did exist, but when live specimens were discovered in China, the tree was then referred to as the “living fossil.” Standing before the tree one can sense its age and feel its wisdom.
I kept this affair of the heart very much to myself for several years until one day on a walk in [Boston’s] Arnold Arboretum with Dr. Shiu-Ying Hu, the Harvard-based botanist emeritus, to whom I’d been recently introduced. During our stroll we casually paused in front of a large tree that I hadn’t looked at closely enough to recognize immediately. Pointing to the tree, Dr. Hu explained this tree was the oldest metasequoia in North America and that she had planted it in the late 1940s using seeds that she had brought with her from China. I was thunderstruck by this coincidence and when I told her of “my” metasequoia in the Public Garden, she informed me that the younger tree that I loved so much was also one of her children.
When I was given the opportunity to write a piece for Gil Shaham, I thought of Dr. Hu and her tree. The result is TreeSong for violin and orchestra. The piece doesn’t aspire to “describe” the tree per se, but it does attempt, in my mind at least, to connect to the degree possible, the great beauty and dignity of this magnificent conifer with the elegance and grace of Gil Shaham and his art.
Williams’s poignant score for Steven Spielberg’s 1993 drama Schindler’s List, which featured violinist Itzhak Perlman, won the Academy Award for Best Original Score, among many other honors. The score is infused with the flavor of Central European Jewish traditional music. Williams excerpted his Three Pieces for Schindler’s List for concert performance; the suite and the single-movement Theme have become repertoire staples for violinists throughout the world.
Our finale in these concerts is a suite of music from the 1977 Steven Spielberg science fiction drama Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Spielberg is on record as attributing some of the success of his blockbuster hit Jaws to John Williams’s immediately recognizable score. Building on the potential for musical connection in his next direct collaboration with Williams, he asked the composer to develop music that plays a central part in the film’s denouement. Upon creating this short suite of music from the soundtrack, the composer wrote,
Over the years, Close Encounters of the Third Kind has remained one of my favorite Steven Spielberg films.
With its depiction of the long-awaited visit of the beautiful and loving extraterrestrials, the fascinating premonitions of the little boy, and the five-note musical motif used to communicate with our other worldly guests, the film offered a rich and unusual canvas on which to present the music.
I’m indebted to Mr. Spielberg for the opportunity he offered me through this film, and am delighted to share this concert edition with those who may remember this exception film as fondly as I do.
In these Close Encounters passages, we find John Williams channeling his inner György Ligeti in creating a roiling, chaotic soundscape before the instantly recognizable 5-note theme emerges in its broadest, most life-affirming form. Within the film this music immediately creates the emotional space in which Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr, and François Truffaut experience anticipation, frustration, terror, and hope in Spielberg’s ultimately optimistic story. In speaking in 2016 of their longstanding collaboration, Steven Spielberg expressed a profound truth about Williams’s artistry when he reminded us, “Without John Williams…we do not wonder, we do not weep, we do not believe.”
Composer and writer Robert Kirzinger is the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Director of Program Publications.