John Williams

Biography

An American conductor and composer, Williams has created scores for some of the best known motion pictures in Hollywood history, largely due to his long association with director Steven Spielberg. But even before the days of that association, he had won an Academy Award working for director Norman Jewison adapting the score of the Broadway play “Fiddler on the Roof” for use in the 1971 movie. Over the following three years Williams worked with a very different director, Irwin Allen, on the soundtrack for two disaster epics: The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974). Those movies in turn brought him to Spielberg’s attention, and their collaboration began with Jaws (1975). The central musical feature of that movie is the “shark theme,” a simple two-note alternation (E and F) that has become in pop culture in the US almost synonymous with approaching danger. Williams has since worked with Spielberg on music for Close Encounters, the Star Wars films, the Indiana Jones pictures, and E.T.