How did John Williams become a famous composer?

Question

I am doing a report on composing (and other music jobs, it would be great if u could give me some info on music therapy, singing, conducting, or teaching music) and I thought it might be a good idea to know how John Williams became a composer since he does all the music for really good movies.

Answer 1

Well I was going to give you a biography on williams, but that has been very acuratly taken care of, so good luck with that report, Williams is the best

Answer 2

John Williams in 1956John Williams was born in Floral Park, New York. In 1948 he moved with his family to Los Angeles, California, where he attended North Hollywood High School and later UCLA. He also studied composition privately with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, who also taught another famous film score composer, Jerry Goldsmith.

In 1952, Williams was drafted and entered the United States Air Force, where he conducted and arranged music for Air Force bands. When discharged in 1954, he returned to New York. There, he went to Juilliard, the alma mater of musicians including the composer Philip Glass and violinist Itzhak Perlman (with whom Williams released an album, Cinema Serenade, in 1997). He studied piano at the school with Rosina Lhevinne. In New York, he worked as a jazz pianist. He also played with noted composer Henry Mancini and even performed on the recording of the famous Peter Gunn theme. In the early 1960s, he served as arranger/bandleader on a series of popular albums with singer Frankie Laine.

Williams was married to his first wife, actress Barbara Ruick, from 1956 until her death on March 3, 1974. They had three children together. He married his second wife, Samantha Winslow, on June 9, 1980, to whom he remains married to this day.




Williams conducting the London Symphony Orchestra during the recording of the score for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.Williams later returned to Los Angeles, where he started working in the film studios. There he worked as an orchestrator with some of the finest film score composers of that time: Franz Waxman, Bernard Herrmann, and Alfred Newman. He also lent his talents as a studio pianist, performing in scores by the likes of Jerry Goldsmith and Elmer Bernstein. He began his career composing TV scores for series including Lost in Space (as "Johnny" Williams) and The Time Tunnel. The release of some of those scores on CD reveal finely-crafted techniques and patterns that anticipate his most famous works.

In the early 1970s, he established himself as a composer for big-budget disaster films with scores for The Towering Inferno, Earthquake, and The Poseidon Adventure. In 1974, Williams was approached by a young Steven Spielberg to write the music for his feature debut, The Sugarland Express. They re-teamed for the director's second film, Jaws, featuring an ominous two-note motif representing the shark. Spielberg's friendship with director George Lucas led to Williams's composing for the Star Wars movies. Over thirty years later, the Williams-Spielberg collaboration has proven to be one of Hollywood's most enduring and fruitful. To date, Williams has composed the music to all but two of Spielberg's movies (The Color Purple and Twilight Zone: The Movie, composed by Quincy Jones and Jerry Goldsmith, respectively [1]). In addition, Lucas and Richard Donner were highly vocal in describing how Williams' scores for the Star Wars series and Superman respectively exceeded their highest expectations.

He has been nominated for 45 Academy Awards, of which he has won five (for Jaws, Star Wars (now known as Episode IV: A New Hope), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Schindler's List, and for arrangements in Fiddler on the Roof). He currently holds the record for the most Oscar nominations for a living person and has the same number of Oscar nominations as Alfred Newman. He has jokingly stated that this means he also holds the record for the most Academy Award losses ever.[citation needed]

Williams has received two Emmy Awards, seven BAFTAs, eighteen Grammy Awards, and has been inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame and the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame. In 2004 he received a Kennedy Center Honor. He also won a Classical Brit award in 2005 for his soundtrack work of the previous year. On January 16, 2006, Williams won a Golden Globe, his fourth, for his score in Memoirs of a Geisha.