15 Minutes Magazine, Album Review >>
ONE of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s most cherished Tanglewood summer traditions is the annual film night with the Boston pops and composer-conductor John Williams. This summer is it will be on August 24 and is eagerly anticipated.
When thinking of Tanglewood John Williams comes to mind as one of the summer festival’s most popular and venerable personalities. This past season he was honored on his 80th birthday and he reflected on his long association with Tanglewood and its musical life.
Williams, who has composed the scores for many of Hollywood’s most acclaimed and successful films, is the winner of five Academy Awards and a host of other prizes, including Emmys, Golden Globes, European decorations and numerous gold and platinum recordings.
He’s been coming to Tanglewood since 1979 and says that he does quite a bit of his creative work there. As related to Clarence Fanto in the Berkshire Eagle, Williams composes every day for five or six hours and then takes a break around the verdant grounds of the festival site, communing with nature and finding inspiration in the sights and sounds .
He was conductor of the Boston Pops for several years beginning in 1980. He says he has done a good deal of his best-known film work there, adding that although his home base, Los Angeles, is "a wonderful place to live," he appreciates Tanglewood’s quiet and its distance from the "exciting but commercial atmosphere of the Hollywood studios."
He calls Tanglewood the "spiritual center of music in America."
"I don’t know of anything else in our country that rivals Tanglewood in terms of the level of music study that takes place and performance experiments with contemporary music through 75 years."
Of his more than 100 film scores, Williams has a special place in his heart for his 1977 collaboration with Steven Spielberg on Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
"I’ve always felt," he says, "that the film’s message has more weight that we might have expected…it’s uplifting, very positive and romantic, celebrating communication and breaking down barriers."
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