Adam Michalak is one of the most experienced scoring mixers working today in Hollywood. He made his first steps in the industry at Sony Pictures Scoring Stage, first as an intern and then gradually climbing up the ladder to become one of the most trusted recordists working in the studio. In that role, he worked for such veteran engineers of the industry as Shawn Murphy, Dennis Sands and Alan Meyerson, recording for film scores by virtually all the great film composers working in Hollywood including John Williams.

In 2018, Adam left Sony and joined Hollywood Scoring, a company that has provided music production for feature films, episodic television, popular video games, and varied broadcast streaming media, but also produced large scale stadium music performances, concert hall productions, and outdoor music festivals.

In this conversation, Adam recollects the path that led him to become a recording engineer for orchestral music, from his early days as a film music fan to his first steps in Hollywood working at Sony's scoring stage and experiencing first hand the work of great film composers and their trusted mixers, offering a unique insight into the creative process of John Williams and Shawn Murphy on several projects as seen from the recording booth. Adam also reflects on the history and evolution of the recording process, offering a wide variety of examples and sharing anecdotes from his own experiences as a scoring mixer. Joining the conversation is film music and John Williams connoisseur Doug Lacey, who shares a friendship with Adam and also has a great experience working in the audio field.

Find more information at https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2023/03/17/legacy-conversations-adam-michalak/

John Williams has written solo parts spotlighting specific instrumentalists both in his film scores and works for the concert hall. While it's not rare to see such superstar musicians as Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma or Anne-Sophie Mutter as the featured soloist and the dedicatee of a piece, Williams has often used the talents of some of the best musicians of the Los Angeles area, including distinguished members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It's the case of Joanne Pearce Martin, the Principal Keyboardist and Pianist of the LA Phil, who recently had the honour to be the featured piano soloist on the soundtrack for Steven Spielberg's acclaimed The Fabelmans, performing both the piano solos from the classical repertoire as heard in the film and John Williams' Academy Award-nominated original score.

In this conversation, Joanne talks about her experience of playing for John Williams and Steven Spielberg on The Fabelmans, sharing stories and insights about her unique collaboration with both the director and the composer during the creation of the film's soundtrack. She also talks about her experience playing under John Williams at the Hollywood Bowl and at the Disney Hall with the LA Phil many times over the years and also as rehearsal pianist, giving her own perspective on the Maestro's musicianship as a composer and conductor.

Learn more at https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2023/02/24/legacy-conversations-joanne-pearce-martin/(opens in a new tab)

The music of John Williams has inspired at least two generations of composers who have now successful careers not just in film, but also in the contemporary classical world. Grammy Award-winning composer and conductor Eric Whitacre is part of this peculiar group. One of the most popular and frequently-performed composers in the world, Whitacre is known primarily for his work in choral music, but he is actually a true multi-faceted artist who became a beacon and an inspiration for a multitude of singers, musicians, composer and lovers of music across the globe. His works are programmed worldwide and his ground-breaking Virtual Choirs have united more than 100,000 singers from more than 145 countries. 

In this conversation, Eric Whitacre talks about his love for the music of John Williams and how it helped shaping his own musical imagination since childhood, explaining why it continues to be for him an object of sincere admiration and also reflecting on his own approach to musicmaking and what it means to be a classical composer today.

More info at https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2023/01/23/eric-whitacre-podcast/

n February 2022, the month of John Williams' 90th Birthday, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland staged a weekend of sold out concerts celebrating the maestro’s landmark birthday. The conductor was Richard Kaufman and The Legacy of John Williams was delighted to present two pre-concert talks with Richard at Dublin’s iconic National Concert Hall.

Prior to the talk we screened our tribute video and images and video clips were presented to the audience members throughout the talk.

The audio was recorded by the NCH and what follows is the full 36 minute talk hosted by Head Contributor Tim Burden, featuring Richard discussing his personal and professional experiences with John Williams, with whom he shares a long-lasting friendship. There are also insightful questions from the audience which gave a suitable intro to both Williams concerts.

Find photos and exclusive videos from the concert at thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com

The Legacy of John Williams, in collaboration with Sony Music, is proud to announce the latest John Williams release - The Fabelmans (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack); a soundtrack album by the five-time Academy Award® winner for director Steven Spielberg’s deeply personal cinematic memory of the forces, and family, that shaped his life and career. The release marks the latest collaboration between Spielberg and Williams, whose longstanding creative partnership spans nearly 50 years and 30 films. From E.T., Jaws and Jurassic Park to Schindler’s List, Lincoln and Saving Private Ryan, Williams and Spielberg’s collaborations have produced some of the most stirring and well-recognized music in film history.

The Fabelmans is a deeply personal portrait of a 20th century American childhood. Written by Spielberg together with Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner, it's a universal coming-of-age story about an isolated young man’s pursuit of his dreams, the film is an exploration of love, artistic ambition, sacrifice and the moments of discovery that allow us to see the truth about ourselves, and our parents, with clarity and compassion. The musical score by John Williams accompanies the film during its key moments with a poignant, lyrical tone that enhances the characters' most intimate and profound feelings--the main theme (heard in the opening track, "The Fabelmans") is one of the most heart-rending and touching themes ever composed by Williams. The music features chamber-like solos for piano, harp, guitar and celeste, painting a heartfelt portrait of the story and its main characters.

The Legacy of John Williams is proud to present this special podcast episode featuring a commentary on John Williams' new soundtrack by Editor Maurizio Caschetto and Head Contributor Tim Burden. The talk focuses around three tracks from the soundtrack album selected by Caschetto and Burden, "Mitzi's Dance", "Mother and Son", and "The Journey Begins," which offer a beautiful representation of Williams' poignant and delicate scoring for this film.

You can listen to John Williams' wonderful new music in full here: https://soundtracks.lnk.to/thefabelmans

Special Thanks to Maria Kopp and Dani Chwatt (Sony Music)

The collaboration between John Williams and Steven Spielberg is by far the longest and most successful artistic relationship between a director and a composer in the history of cinema. The duo is synonymous of what means having a fruitful, honest and profound association between two people making films together. Calendar year 2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the very first encounter between Spielberg and Williams, which happened when the director was in preparation of his first feature film, The Sugarland Express; after being impressed by Williams’ work for such films as The Reivers and The Cowboys, the director decided he was the type of composer he was looking for. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

The Spielberg/Williams collaboration spans now six decades, 29 feature films (including the upcoming The Fabelmans, which will premiere at the 47th edition of the Toronto Film Festival in September) and several special projects, so it’s virtually impossible to sum it up in a few words. Their roster includes some of the most successful and everlasting movies in the history of cinema: Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, but also such highly acclaimed dramas as Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Munich and Lincoln.

Soundtrack label La-La Land Records has recently reissued three classic John Williams scores from the Spielberg canon: Jurassic Park, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.

Soundtrack Producer Mike Matessino returns to The Legacy of John Williams podcast to offer commentary on these three classic Spielberg/Williams collaborations, while also offering an in-depth overall reflection on the partnership between the composer and the director.

Pianist Gloria Cheng belongs in the category of instrumentalists who are true favourites of John Williams to the point of being even an inspiration for the composer. One of the most acclaimed musicians of his generation and an advocate of the contemporary repertoire and new-music, Gloria Cheng performed as pianist for John Williams in many film scores since the mid-2000s and has been spotlighted as soloist on such scores as Munich (2005), The Adventures of Tintin (2011) and War Horse (2011). She also performed on other Williams’ scores including The BFG, The Post, and the Star Wars sequel trilogy. In addition to the film work, Cheng also had the unique honour of performing Williams’ rare piano compositions for the concert hall: the 4-movement Conversations for solo piano (written and dedicated to her between 2013 and 2014), and the Prelude and Scherzo for piano and orchestra, which premiered in Barcelona in 2021 with the Orquesta Sinfónica del Vallès under Marc Timón, and later for its American premiere with the Albany Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Alan Miller.

Gloria Cheng is one of the world’s leading interpreters of piano works by major composers and a true advocate for new music, establishing fruitful partnerships with such contemporary music icons as Gyorgy Ligeti, Pierre Boulez, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Terry Riley, Thomas Adès and Steven Stucky. Gloria Cheng also works frequently as pianist and keyboardist for film scores and has performed on soundtracks by by such composers as Randy Newman, James Horner, Michael Giacchino. In 2005, she began a fruitful association with John Williams that continues until this day.

In this conversation, Gloria talks about her career as a classical performer and her path that led to perform as pianist for film scores; she recollectes her first experience playing for John Williams on Munich, the challenges of playing the solo on Tintin and her views on the Maestro’s style when writing for piano, reflecting upon her experiences playing Conversations and the Prelude and Scherzo.

For more information, visit https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2022/08/05/gloria-cheng-podcast/

JoAnn Turovksy is one of the most accomplished and talented harpists in the world. She is Principal Harp of several Los Angeles-based orchestras: the L.A. Opera orchestra, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. In a career spanning now four decades, Turovsky has been lauded and revered with many accolades: she is the recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the American Harp Society.

Harp is an instrument very dear to John Williams as it's often prominently featured in a lot of his film and concert music. Harpist extraordinaire JoAnn Turovsky has possibly the longest and most impressive track record of playing a lot of John Williams' harp parts over the last three decades as his favoured principal harp for studio recordings in Los Angeles. Turovsky is heard playing exquisite harp solos on some of the composer's most lyrical and haunting film scores including Angela's Ashes, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Munich and The Book Thief. Turovsky's impeccable playing can be appreciated even when not playing a solo part, but when accompanying and enriching the orchestral texture, as the harp is used by Williams like a master orchestrator would do.

JoAnn has also been a professor of harp at the USC Thornton School of Music for the past three decades and sits on the faculty of the Colburn Conservatory of Music and the Colburn School of Performing Arts, teaching the next generation of harpists.

In this conversation, JoAnn Turovsky talks about her impressive career as a classical and studio musician, remembering her many experiences playing for John Williams, including her solo work for Angela's Ashes and The Book Thief, but also illuminating on the composer's use of harp and how he let the instrument shine within the orchestral palette.

Visit https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/ for more information.

For the joy of fans and admirers of the Maestro around the world, the first two John Williams expanded archival releases of 2022 have been recently announced. They are respectively SpaceCamp (from Intrada) and Presumed Innocent (from Varèse Sarabande), two sought-after titles that have been long out of print and that now are finally available in expanded and remastered form courtesy of Soundtrack Producer Mike Matessino, giving a new chance to listeners to appreciate and rediscover two very unique and distinctive film works in John Williams’ catalogue.

In this conversation, Matessino returns to The Legacy of John Williams podcast to discuss how both SpaceCamp and Presumed Innocent fit into the chronology of John Williams’ career, talking about how the composer became a household name during the 1980s and how he challenged himself in new and diverse projects.

Special Thanks to Douglass Fake & Roger Feigelson (Intrada), Cary Mansfield (Varèse Sarabande) and to Mike Matessino.

For more information, visit https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/

The Legacy of John Williams presents a special podcast "bonus" episode celebrating the release of the expanded edition of one of John Williams' most uplifting and joyous scores from the 1980s: SpaceCamp, composed for the 1986 film directed by Harry Winer and starring Kate Capshaw, Lea Thompson, Kelly Preston and a very young Joaquin Phoenix, telling the story of a group of young kids accidentally launched deep into outer space during an astronaut training program. Specialty soundtrack label Intrada just announced the release of a 2-CD set featuring the complete film score composed by John Williams on disc 1 (mastered from the recently found original three-track film mixes by engineer Armin Steiner), and the original soundtrack album program as mixed for record by Len Engel from a newly mastered hi-res transfer of the 1/4" album master on disc 2. This new edition is once again assembled, mastered and produced brilliantly by Mike Matessino, who also wrote detailed liner notes chronicling the film's history and production and providing an excellent analysis of the score.

A conversation with Mike Matessino discussing this new release is coming soon on The Legacy of John Williams podcast, but as a gift to our readers and listeners, The Legacy of John Williams presents a bonus "prologue" episode featuring two full tracks from this new release, including the long-awaited unreleased cue "Arriving at Daedalus", perhaps one of the most sought-after in the long list of previously unreleased pieces from Williams' filmography. So, sit back, relax and prepare to enjoy a special treat, courtesy of Intrada and Mike Matessino.

Order your copy of SpaceCamp Expanded Edition at Intrada's website: SpaceCamp Expanded Edition 2-CD set

Special Thanks to Douglass Fake, Roger Feigelson and Jeff Johnson at Intrada, and to Mike Matessino.