John Williams: A Composer's Life w/ Tim Greiving

Join us for the launch event for the very first biography of John Williams, the famous composer of Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, Jaws, Schindler's List, and countless other pop culture touchstone. Author Tim Greiving will share fascinating details about Williams' life and career, and discuss how he convinced the famously private (and biography resistant) legend to spend more than 20 hours being interviewed for the book.

About the book:

The first biography of a great American composer of the cinema age.

John Williams is one of the most important film composers of all time, having almost singlehandedly revived the Hollywood symphonic scoring tradition and helped restore the livelihood of American orchestras through the popularity of film music programming. His film music, in the words of director Oliver Stone, "came to stand for the American culture."

In John Williams: A Composer's Life, the first biography of the composer, author Tim Greiving offers an engaging account of a man whose body of work is well-known but whose personal life has consistently remained very private. Williams wrote the memorable scores and hummable themes for a staggering number of popular touchstones across multiple generations--among them Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jaws, E.T., Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, and the Harry Potter series--and earned more Oscar nominations than any individual artist in the history of the motion picture Academy. He also composed dozens of concerti, fanfares, and other concert works and was a national presence as music director of the Boston Pops for more than a decade. He inspired countless children to pursue a career in the orchestra and won the respect of the classical community worldwide. Seeking to understand what drove Williams's musical productivity and its effects on the lives of those close to him, Greiving delves deeply into the composer's decades-long career, uncovering countless new stories and revelations. Throughout, he analyzes and describes Williams' film scores, recalling them primarily in narrative and emotional terms rather than purely musicological ones, and in doing so emphasizes one of Williams's principle strengths: his musical storytelling.

With unprecedented interview access to Williams and those close to him, Greiving presents the definitive portrait of a beloved but famously private doyen of twentieth-century pop culture. Featuring 175 exclusive interviews--including with Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, George Miller, Mia Farrow, Hans Zimmer, Yo-Yo Ma, session musicians, family members, and friends--John Williams: A Composer's Life is the first and last word on the great court composer of the cinema age, the musical conductor of our collective memory.

About the participants:

Tim Greiving is an arts journalist and historian in Los Angeles who specializes in film music. He regularly writes for the Los Angeles Times, and has contributed stories and interviews to NPR, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Criterion, Variety, The Ringer, Los Angeles Magazine, and Vulture.

Gail Eichenthal is a veteran broadcast journalist whose voice is familiar to longtime listeners of both Classical KUSC and KNX News Radio. As an oral historian, she has conducted videotaped interviews with hundreds of luminaries including Rosa Parks, Johnny Cash, Stephen Sondheim, John Updike, Sidney Poitier, Carol Burnett and President Bill Clinton. Gail has also written for the Los Angeles Times and other publications.