BMI honored legendary composer John Williams Wednesday night at the 34th annual Film, TV & Visual Media Awards at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills.
The 86-year old maestro was presented with the John Williams Award by BMI president/CEO Mike O’Neill and BMI VP/Creative— Film, TV & Visual Media Doreen Ringer-Ross in recognition of his incomparable career in film and television composition.
After receiving a long standing ovation, a gracious Williams noted, “Good fortune has come to me mainly in the form of people — parents, teachers, mentor, role models,” he said, reeling off the names of many composers who had influenced him just as he had the composers in the film. “Alfred and Lionel Newman, Conrad Salinger, Bernard Hermann, Andre Previn…These were all people who seemed to have a lot more faith in me than I had in myself,” he said. “In 1960, at Universal Studios, [music supervisor] Stanley Wilson had a music department. In the hallway there, there were five or six rooms, little rooms with no windows. And each room had a little piano and on any given day I would be in one room, Jerry Goldsmith in the next one, Lalo Shifrin in the next one, Quincy Jones in the next one, Morty Stevens, also Conrad Salinger and the late Bernard Hermann, who made it his home for a couple of years and wrote some great music and drove everyone crazy. It was a situation where we taught each other and learned from each other and it was a group effort that produced the results that each one of us was able to accomplish.”
INTERVIEW
- Variety – Speaking exclusively to Variety before the ceremony, Williams acknowledged that “in the last year or two, awards seem to be coming along,” cracking, “It must have something to do with being so old, they must think now is the time.” Williams became the first composer recipient of the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Honor in 2016. – Full article
PHOTOS
