It’s the summer of 2025, and we’re about to hear a brand new, 22-minute composition by John Towner Williams. How wild, how improbable—how amazing—is that? How lucky are we who love his music? John won’t be conducting, but if all goes according to plan he will be in the audience, witnessing this very special concert work come to life in the hands of pianist Emanuel Ax and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
For those who can’t be there on Saturday, WAMC will broadcast the concert live, and the concerto is also going to be recorded for a future release.
Full article at Tim Greiving’s ‘Behind the Moon’
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Williams started working on the concerto in late 2023 — “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” he recalled thinking when he began — and gave it to Ax the next spring. Ax’s first impression on seeing the score, which opens with a series of cadenzas and contains many improvisatory solo passages: “It’s thorny,” he thought.
“It has nothing to do with ‘Star Wars,’” Ax added. “It’s his other way of writing music. So in a sense I was very comfortable with that, because I’ve done thorny music before. I just said, ‘OK, I have to practice a lot.’”