John Williams: Hollywood to Boston
by John Burlingame

The following interview is excerpted from The Boston Pops: The Story of America's Orchestra.


JB: Can you single out a handful of memorable moments over the years with the Pops?

Williams: My first concert as conductor of the Boston Pops was a memorable night for me. It was the opening program of the 1980 Pops season, and the great Isaac Stern was the soloist. The concert included a special appearance by the little Star Wars creatures. I remember the first time I worked with Yo-Yo Ma, when he performed the Haydn C Major Concerto with us, fairly early on in his career. I'll never forget the second and third tours of Japan in the late 1980s; we did concerts entirely of my own music, which was a thrilling thing for me. My first performance with Itzhak Perlman, when he performed the Bruch concerto, made a lasting impression on me. I also remember very well the television programs with people like Sammy Davis, Jr.; Perry Como; Stan Getz; Leontyne Price; Kathleen Battle; Ray Charles; and Sarah Chang. It's a long list of very rich memories.

JB: How did the Pops change during your time as director?

Williams: The personnel of the orchestra has changed greatly. Many of the earlier musicians were European-born and -trained and came from different traditions, so when Mr. Fiedler would play some swing music, it was great, because it was a symphony orchestra letting its hair down, so to speak, and having fun with it. Most of the new members are young people who have been trained in American conservatories, which means that they know something about jazz and pop music and have developed a great breadth of stylistic skill and adaptability. By 1990, the orchestra could play popular music very well, accurately and idiomatically. They really did swing and enjoyed it, because they had grown up with it. I just think that the orchestra got better and better. We also worked extremely hard in the area of recording. The hall is very reverberant, so we experimented with seating and microphone positions and all the rest of it. I think if one tracks the recordings that I made over the 15-year period or so with the orchestra, there's a marked change in the quality of not only the instrumental performance but the sound quality.

JB: Is film music now a larger part of the Pops experience because of your presence?

Williams: Since I was associated with films, there may have been some expectation that I would do more film music than others, and probably I did. For a long time, when we were making programs, I deliberately didn't play Star Wars, for example. It got to the point where I would go to Chicago and conduct and people would say, "Why don't you play E.T. or Star Wars? It's what we came to hear." I felt that, in a way, I was between a rock and hard place. If I played too much film music, especially my own film music, I could be criticized; but if I didn't, the audience might complain that their expectations weren't fulfilled. So it became a matter of making a menu and balancing the material. I think now all the orchestras are playing more film music, especially at the American summer festivals -- the Hollywood Bowl, Blossom, Ravinia, and elsewhere. The fact that we haven't had a great period of Broadway musicals, with rich scores coming every year, has led conductors naturally to look more and more to Hollywood for material.

JB: What is your role with the Pops now?

Williams: I'm called Boston Pops Laureate Conductor, and the orchestra has also given me the title Artist in Residence at Tanglewood. At Tanglewood, I conduct a little more than I used to, and I speak to the students as much as I'm able. For the Pops, I continue to conduct in the spring, although on a reduced schedule, and I conduct some of the holiday concerts. I've also been talking to the Pops and Keith about future tours to Japan.

JB: What's your assessment of the Boston Pops as an American cultural institution?

Williams: The Boston Pops began in 1885. That makes it 115 years old, which by the standards of North America makes it quite venerable and unique -- after all, it's about half the age of our country. Most orchestras in the late 19th century had a season of maybe 12 or 15 weeks, but the rest of the year the players were schoolteachers or cab drivers or sold suits or whatever they could do. The Pops made it possible for the Boston Symphony, in that early period, to have a full-year musical life. It started like the Strauss concerts in Vienna, where people had their beer and wine, and they played Waldteufel waltzes, Strauss polkas, and the latest pop song, and so on. And it became a big success. I don't think any of the other American orchestras either tried it or succeeded to that degree. But it succeeded in Boston, which says something about the Boston public, public transportation, Symphony Hall, and the cultural climate. After all, Boston was and is one of the intellectual centers and literary focal points of our culture.

Throughout the century, famous musicians conducted the Pops. Arthur Fiedler came in about 1930 and was there for 50 years, as you know. He brought them into television and recording, so that the American public and the world at large came to know the Boston Pops. The public might not have known about the Boston Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, or the Philadelphia Orchestra, but everybody knew the Pops. And its popularity has continued to this day.