Music Album Review: 'John Williams Conducts John Williams: The Star Wars Trilogy'

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Cover Design by Howard Fritzson. Photos (C) 1977, 1980, 1983 by Lucasfilm Ltd. (C) 1990 CBS Records


Some day I’m going to build a recording studio with a sound as live as if it were inside a cathedral! – George Lucas to composer John Williams after the recording sessions for The Empire Strikes Back score, 1980
In March of 1990, Star Wars creator George Lucas hired 90 San Francisco Bay area classical musicians and created a one-time ensemble which he called The Skywalker Symphony Orchestra. Between March 19 and 20, Lucas, composer-conductor John Williams, and a recording team led by producer Thomas Z. Shepard worked with this unique group of players at the brand-new recording studio in Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch, located in Marin County, California.

The result was Sony Classical’s John Williams Conducts John Williams: The Star Wars Trilogy – Star Wars * The Empire Strikes Back * Return of the Jedi, a 13-track compilation album of concert arrangements of music from the original Star Wars film trilogy. 

Music is a major emotional underpinning for all my films. While writing the Star Wars script, I listened to music for inspiration and would actually arrange the script into various “symphonies.” I visualized the scenes in terms of symphonic music – large, grand, theatrical scores – as opposed to rock and roll or electronic music. – George Lucas in the liner notes for John Williams Conducts John Williams: The Star Wars Trilogy. 

The album presents 13 themes from Star Wars (aka Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope), The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. Six tracks represent Star Wars, three represent The Empire Strikes Back, and four tracks are from the Return of the Jedi score.

And although the musical selection is similar to that found in Varese Sarabande’s John Williams: The Star Wars Trilogy (1983), the track list is arranged differently:

1.      Star Wars – Main Theme (Star Wars): 5:51

2.      Princess Leia’s Theme (Star Wars): 4:43

3.      The Little People (Star Wars): 5:15

4.      The Imperial March (The Empire Strikes Back): 3:03

5.      Yoda’s Theme (The Empire Strikes Back): 3:15

6.      Parade of the Ewoks (Return of the Jedi): 4:59

7.      The Asteroid Field (The Empire Strikes Back): 4:34

8.      Luke and Leia (Return of the Jedi): 4:59

9.      The Cantina Band (Star Wars): 2:16

10.  Here They Come! (Star Wars): 2:16

11.  Jabba the Hutt (Return of the Jedi): 3:07

12.  The Forest Battle (Return of the Jedi): 4:20

13.  Throne Room and Finale (Star Wars): 7:57

  

My Take

I am, I must admit, a Star Wars music junkie. While it is not true that I will buy any CD or digital audio album if it is labeled Star Wars or is credited to Maestro Williams – I won’t, for instance, buy Meco’s Star Wars and other Galactic Funk or Walt Disney Records’ 2018 remastered editions of the original soundtracks (as originally released between 1977 and 2005, without the Special Edition albums) – I do try to get as many of the best records as I can.

John Williams Conducts John Williams: The Star Wars Trilogy is one of the oldest CDs in my music collection; I bought it in December of 1990, less than a month after CBS Records/Sony Classical published it. And for an album that has been handled – with great care, mind you – and played regularly for almost 28 years, my copy is in decent shape. The plastic ‘jewel case” packaging is relatively intact; the booklet with the liner notes has a few tears from failed attempts to put it back in its place, but it’s still readable. And most important, the CD still plays flawlessly; it doesn’t have nasty scratches that mar either its playback or sound quality.

What about the music, you ask?

Well, the album contains what I call the basic Star Wars repertoire, which consists of the concert arrangements of:

·         Star Wars (Main Theme)

·         Princess Leia’s Theme

·         Here They Come!

·         The Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme)

·         Yoda’s Theme

·         The Asteroid Theme

·         Luke and Leia

·         Parade of the Ewoks

·         Jabba the Hutt

·         Forest Battle

·         Throne Room and Finale

This is essentially the meat-and-potatoes that make up most Star Wars Trilogy cover albums. For variety’s sake, most producers will add concert arrangements of other themes from Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.

John Williams Conducts John Williams: The Star Wars Trilogy adds two tracks to the core selection, both from Star Wars. They are:

Track 3: The Little People, which is the bouncy yet furtive theme for the child-sized Jawas, the Tatooine desert scavengers that capture Artoo Detoo and See Threepio and end up selling them to Luke Skywalker’s Uncle Owen. Derived from Star Wars’ The Dune Sea/Jawa Sandcrawler, the track consists primarily of the oompah-oompah motif for the Jawas, a clever and amusing theme that evokes their rodent-like qualities. Only at the tail end does William add a hint of menace, with a sudden “hit” of the Imperial motif used only in Star Wars (and is not to be confused with The Imperial March from The Empire Strikes Back).

Track 9: The Cantina Band, the jazz-calypso fusion piece that Williams composed originally for a small jazz ensemble he put together in 1977 to record the original track for the Star Wars soundtrack. Here it is played by members of the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra, with a bit of synthesizer (programmed and sequenced by Jeff Beal and Greg Sudmeier) added to give the “Benny Goodman swing piece played underwater” tune an otherworldly vibe.

John Williams Conducts John Williams: The Star Wars Trilogy is perhaps one of the better Star Wars “cover” albums, and not just because the composer himself conducts the music. The record is a testament to George Lucas’s commitment to quality, as well as his deep understanding of the relationship of music and the images he creates on screen. This is surely great music that not only stands the test of time, but can be enjoyed on its own artistic merits.

Truly, the Force is with John Williams Conducts John Williams: The Star Wars Trilogy. I strongly recommend it.

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