Few American composers of any description have enjoyed the fame of John Williams, and even fewer have had their music become so familiar to a worldwide audience.
It’s likely that almost anyone you run into could sing the opening theme of Star Wars (1977), for example, or imitate the deep, chopping bass figure that accompanies the great white shark of Jaws (1975). His music is heard every night as the theme of the NBC Nightly News, and he’s been nominated again for an Academy Award for his score for Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln.
“He’s the number-one movie composer in the world. The themes are memorable and will be with us into perpetuity. And as you listen to them and study them in order to conduct them, you find that they’re really magnificently put together,” said Bob Lappin, director of the Palm Beach Pops orchestra.
“Everything is there: Dramatic flair, magnificent harmonies. He’s a genius, and he’s sought after everywhere to do movies,” he said.
This coming week, Lappin and the Pops will present five concerts devoted to the music of Williams, the first time in its 21 years that the group has focused on the instrumental music of one composer (the group has done concerts in the past devoted to the songs of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II). The orchestra will present selections from Star Wars, Superman, Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, and “a little ‘E.T.,’ probably,” Lappin said, among others.
Williams, who turns 81 next Friday, began his career in the 1950s as a jazz pianist at the end of the Big Band era, studied at Juilliard with pianist Rosina Lhevinne and in Los Angeles with the Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. He began working in movies and television that same decade, and has won five Academy Awards, four Golden Globes, and 21 Grammy Awards.
The 50-member Palm Beach Pops will find its work cut out for it in these concerts, Lappin said.
“This is going to be a very difficult concert for the orchestra. You really have to be a double-plus-A musician to be able to cut this stuff,” he said. “This is very complex, very, very technical. You really have to have your chops, so to speak. It’s not easy.”
One of Lappin’s favorite moments is the love theme from Superman (1978), which later was turned into a pop hit for singer Maureen McGovern as Can You Read My Mind? He hadn’t decided whether or not to add a vocal performance to the concert, but he prefers the symphonic setting in any case.
“The orchestral thing is so beautiful for ‘Superman,’ that I wouldn’t eliminate it if I did a vocal on it. I would do the orchestral thing followed by the same thing sung,” he said.
Williams’ gift for memorable melody is one of the things that sets him apart from many other film composers, and one of his most beloved is the theme he wrote for the Holocaust drama Schindler’s List (1993), which violinists including Itzhak Perlman are fond of programming.
“The theme is gorgeous,” Lappin said. “We’ve done that before within concerts and everyone just loves that.”
Williams’ career also includes numerous classical scores, especially concerti, and 15 years (1980-1995) at the helm of the Boston Pops, a tenure that was not without some controversy. A few years in, Williams resigned and had to be cajoled into returning in a dispute over orchestral discipline.
“They finally had to get a committee of orchestra musicians and board members to go out to California and see if they could get him back,” Lappin said. “And they brought him back, and he did an outstanding job. I think he was a great asset to the orchestra.”
Lappin and the Pops are hoping for a good turnout for the Williams concerts, but while the national economy is recovering, concertgoers are still restraining their spending.
“This is not a banner year for the performing arts throughout the country. The economic situation in America is difficult and it affects the arts big time,” he said. “There’s a lot of orchestras that have either closed their doors or gone bankrupt in the last year, close to 30, which is just terrible.”
Closer to home, the Caldwell Theatre Company and Florida Stage closed within the past two years, he added.
“We’ve got to get the economy turned around. That’s the first thing. People are watching their bucks, and they’re not going to as many events as they used to. They’re very choosy, and then they hear about the plight of arts organizations and then they become wary about buying subscriptions.
“The subscription model has a problem. It used to be that you had to have a big base of subscriptions and then you’d sell single tickets above that. And then you’d have a well-packed concert hall,” he said. “But now people are not buying six concerts or six shows; a lot of people are not, and that’s hurting the industry. So that model has changed, and I don’t know the answer to that.”
Further, orchestral music is up against the ubiquity of commercial popular styles, Lappin said.
“It’s pushed a lot of good music out of the way, and that’s not good for kids, either,” he said. “We have a very extensive school program where we go into the elementary schools. We’ve taught about 90,000 children in the last nine or 10 years. We teach the rudiments of music, from the classics to the present time, because so many schools have thrown out their arts programs and music programs.
“They’re not exposed to American music other than rock and rap and hip-hop and so forth,” Lappin said. “It’s a tough deal, because you’re going to have a whole generation of people who aren’t familiar with this kind of music.”
Regardless, music as widely known as Williams’ should be popular across the age groups, and that’s one sign of this singular composer’s drawing power.
“He’s at the top, and people try to shoot for that,” Lappin said. “He’s been a great influence on music in America.”
The Palm Beach Pops presents its Maestro of the Movies concerts Monday and Wednesday at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton; Tuesday at the Eissey Campus Theater on the campus of Palm Beach State College in Palm Beach Gardens; and Thursday and Friday at the Kravis Center. All shows are at 8 p.m. Tickets: $29-$89. Call 561-832-7677 or visit www.palmbeachpops.org.