John Williams

[1932 -] For the modern market John Williams is the most immediately remembered named when the mention is movie soundtracks. Star Wars is the best-selling soundtrack in history. Succeeding a period marked by the use of popular music on the soundtracks (1965-1975), Williams' work served as come back of symphonic writing for a movie. The philarmonics strikes-back. His compositional style – intentionally academic on most occasions – formed a bridge to the legendary past of the founders of composition for films like Eric W. Korngold and Max Steiner.

Son of a jazz drummer, Williams studied piano in the 40s and in the following decade began working as a studio musician for Columbia Pictures. Later, as a pianist at 20th Century Fox studios, worked on recordings for Franz Waxman and Dimitri Tiomkim. Parallel to the his instrumentist work started composing exercises. His first soundtrack for a film was made for Daddy-O (1959), but the low-budget film didn´t represented much in his career. Developed his style writing for the TV series produced by Irwin Allen in the 60s, as Lost in Space, Time Tunnel and Land of Giants. Continued composing for cinema with Diamond Head (1963), The Killers (1964) and How To Steal a Million (1967). Finally achieved better exposition with The Reivers (1969) and the disaster movies The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Towering Inferno (1974) and Earthquake (1974), also produced by Irwin Allen. The notorious partnership with Steven Spielberg began in 1974 in the film Sugarland Express. During this period Williams exercised other lines of expression as the avant-garde music Images (1972) and jazz influences in The Eiger Sanction (1975), besides the beautiful country soundtrack for Missouri Breaks (1976) and the gothic climates of Dracula (1979). The definitive consecration came with Jaws (1975) and, especially, Star Wars (1977). Later, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and ET (1982) reassured his status both in efficiency in supporting films as in popularity. Today established as one of the greatest composers of the medium, Williams was able to diversify its work, as did, for example, in the intimate music for Angela's Ashes (1999), in the modernism of AI (2001) and Minority Report (2002), in the noble beauty of War Horse (2011) or even reaffirm his usual colorful style as in Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone (2001). With the soundtrack for The Thief Books (2013) received his 49th Oscar nomination, being the only professional in the area to have so many nominations.