Even if you don't know the composer's name, you're sure to recognize the iconic music behind behemoth films such as Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, and more than 100 other iconic films.
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For such an influential and prolific career, composer John Williams was bestowed with another honor at the 34th annual BMI Film, TV & Visual Media Awards on May 9 in Beverly Hills, Calif. He received the John Williams Award, which was presented to him by BMI executives Mike O'Neill and Doreen Ringer-Ross.
A film tribute accompanied the honor, which featured testimonials from composers such as Thomas Newman, David Newman, Alan Silvestri, James Newton Howard, and Mike Post, and directors with whom Williams has worked over the years, including Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams and George Lucas.
"Aside from my parents, I can't think of anyone who's impacted me more," composer Brian Tyler said of Williams' influence.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Wise words from our <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BMIFilmTVAwards?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BMIFilmTVAwards</a> honoree, John Williams. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/JohnWilliams?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#JohnWilliams</a> <a href="https://t.co/7bRhZe9owD">pic.twitter.com/7bRhZe9owD</a></p>— Broadcast Music Inc. (@bmi) <a href="https://twitter.com/bmi/status/993940406936141824?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 8, 2018</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
"Good fortune has come to me mainly in the form of people — parents, teachers, mentor, role models," Williams said during his acceptance speech. "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."
This award follows many other honors for the prolific film composer. He is one of the top GRAMMY winners of all time with 24 wins to his name, spanning his first win for 1975 for Album Of Best Original Score Written For A Motion Picture Or A Television Special for Jaws to his most recent win for 2017 for Best Arrangement, Instrumental Or A Cappella for "Escapades For Alto Saxophone And Orchestra" from Catch Me If You Can. The Recording Academy recognized him with the Trustees Award for 2018 for his contributions to the music community.
The 2018 BMI Awards also recognized composers Laura Karpman, Miriam Cutler and Lolita Ritmanis with the BMI Champion Award as founders of The Alliance of Women Film Composers, which they started in 2014. Composer Rick Baitz received the Classic Contribution Award for his hand in the long-running BMI workshop "Composing for the Screen." composers James Newton Howard, Alexandre Desplat, Brian Tyler, Danny Elfman, Alan Silvestri, Ludwig Göransson, Tyler Bates, Christopher Lennertz, and Fil Eisler also received BMI recognition.
