Music Album Review: 'A Tribute to John Williams: An 80th Birthday Celebration'

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(C) 2012 Sony Classical
John, Happy birthday to the greatest of all maestros and the greatest of all friends. - Steven Spielberg, writing in the liner notes booklet, A Tribute to John Williams: An 80th Birthday Celebration

 On February 28, 2012, Sony Classical released A Tribute to John Williams: An 80th Birthday Celebration, a one-CD compilation of music composed and conducted by the dean of film composers and - perhaps - one of America's most beloved composers. The 15-track album contains 14 musical pieces - movie themes, classical works, and even a television network's theme - recorded over the years with several ensembles, including the Boston Pops Orchestra, the Recording Arts Orchestra of Los Angeles, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra, and several studio ensembles hired for various movie scores by Hollywood studios for original motion picture soundtracks. All 14 of these tracks were previously released in earlier albums by Sony Classical. 

 Official Sony Classical video: 'Main Theme from Schindler' List'

The 15th track, Happy Birthday Variations, is the only previously unreleased track in this album. It wasn't composed for A Tribute to John Williams: An 80th Birthday Celebration, per the liner notes, it was originally recorded by Maestro Williams with the Recording Arts Orchestra of Los Angeles on December 9, 1999 at Sony Pictures' Culver City (California) studio, but it appears for the first time on a recording in this 2012 album. 

Happy Birthday John, Maestro, friend, collaborator, and storyteller. You brought my stories to life beyond my wildest dreams - George Lucas, writing in the liner notes booklet, A Tribute to John Williams: An 80th Birthday Celebration   

 Official Sony Classical video: Happy Birthday Variations by John Williams

 Track List:

  1. Sound the Bells!
  2. Out to Sea/The Shark Cage Fugue from Jaws
  3. Theme from Sabrina (Itzhak Perlman, violin)
  4. March from 1941
  5. Adventures on Earth from E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
  6. Dartmoor, 1912 from War Horse
  7. The Adventures of Mutt from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
  8. Harry's Wondrous World from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
  9. Elegy for Cello and Orchestra (Yo-Yo Ma, cello)
  10. Going to School from Memoirs of a Geisha (Yo-Yo Ma, cello)
  11. The Mission Theme (Theme for NBC Nightly News)
  12. Theme from Schindler's List (Itzhak Perlman, violin)
  13. The Adventure Continues from The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn
  14. Throne Room and Finale from Star Wars
  15. Happy Birthday Variations

Dear John, It has been a great pleasure and an honor to play your wonderful music. You are the best. I am lucky to have you as a friend. Happy 80th birthday and many happy and healthy returns. - Itzhak Perlman, writing in the liner notes booklet, A Tribute to John Williams: An 80th Birthday Celebration 

 My Take

 I have been a fan of John Williams' music since 1977, when I first watched Star Wars in a darkened theater surrounded by eager, happy viewers on a South Florida autumn afternoon. I had, of course, already seen a few films - and even TV shows - scored by the maestro (Midway, The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, The Towering Inferno), but before I was 14, movie scores were not something that I consciously paid much attention to. But after Star Wars, I kept my eyes - and ears - peeled for the "Music By..." credit either in a movie's main titles or the end credits to see who had done the score. 

 (And here I must confess....I wasn't keen on seeing 1978's Superman: The Movie until I saw John Williams' name on the television commercial. Before that, I wasn't sure if I wanted to watch Richard Donner's now-classic take on the Man of Steel. But it was the presence of Williams' score that sold me on a film whose tagline was "You'll believe a man can fly.")

 As you can well imagine, I have quite a few albums and box sets of music composed and conducted by John Williams. Most of them, naturally, are original soundtracks from such films as Schindler's List, Raiders of the Lost Ark, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Superman, Close Encounters of the Third Kind,  and, of course, many albums of music from all eight of the existing Star Wars "main saga" movies. 

 My music collection also includes many CDs of the recordings Maestro Williams made during his 13-year gig as principal conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra (1980-1993), including those produced by his current label, Sony Classical.

 As a result, I was already familiar with over half the tracks contained in A Tribute to John Williams: An 80th Celebration. I recognized selections from Cinema Serenade, The Spielberg-Williams Collaboration, John Williams Conducts John Williams: The Star Wars Trilogy, and even selections from Boston Pops Orchestra albums released in the 1980s by Philips, including By Request: The Best of John Williams. 

 Happily, A Tribute to John Williams: An 80th Birthday Celebration contains several tracks I had not heard on any album when I bought it in 2016. These included Sound the Bells! and Maestro Williams' concert piece Elegy for Cello and Orchestra, performed beautifully here by cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Recording Arts Orchestra of Los Angeles. 

 Official Sony Classical video: 'March from 1941'

 Of course, several tracks on A Tribute to John Williams: An 80th Birthday Celebration are among my favorite compositions of all time; I've included links to four of them in this review. Each composition has a distinct mood and style, but they all point to Maestro Williams' versatility and his remarkable talent for telling stories through music alone. 

A Tribute to John Williams: An 80th Celebration is a fine salute to an artist who I believe is a true American genius. For six decades, Williams' contributions to film and classical music have captured the imaginations of millions of moviegoers and concert audiences. His symphonic scores, a rarity in the late 1960s and early 1970s - when Williams made the transition from a young contract player/orchestrator named "Johnny" to the more mature Oscar-winning composer-conductor known as "John" or "Maestro Williams" - revived the genre and inspired a new generation of film composers such as James Horner, Hans Zimmer, Howard Shore, Michael Kamen, and Michael Giacchino, to add their musical voices to his own.

Even better, A Tribute to John Williams: An 80th Birthday Celebration was not a valedictorian album. Far from it! Since Sony Classical dropped the album on February 28, 2012 (March 5, 2012 in Great Britain and the European Union), Williams has written scores for Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, The BFG, The Post, and Ready Player One. 

 In addition, the Grand Jedi Master of music from a galaxy far, far away has composed and conducted the music for Star Wars - Episode VII: The Force Awakens and Star Wars - Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. He has also announced that he will retire from the Star Wars franchise upon the completion of 2019's Star Wars - Episode IX.   

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