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One of the pillars of film scoring and the most popular film composer of his era, John Williams has created music for some of the most successful motion pictures in Hollywood history -- Star Wars, E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, and Harry Potter are just a handful of selections from an extensive catalog that has included over 50 Academy Awards nominations. After getting his start in television in the late '50s, Williams worked more steadily on feature films by the early '70s, impressing with his stirring orchestral scores for blockbuster disaster films like The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Earthquake (1974), and The Towering Inferno (1974), as well as through his work with such emerging directors as Robert Altman (1973's The Long Goodbye) and Steven Spielberg (1974's The Sugarland Express). His recurring partnership with Spielberg would span six decades. Williams' ominous, encroaching "Shark Theme" for Spielberg's Jaws in 1975 and his five-note spacecraft melody from 1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (penned with Spielberg's note that it should convey "hello" in mind) would have likely cemented his stature as the go-to Hollywood composer for sci-fi-adventure-thriller fare even without the colossal success of 1977's Star Wars, his most iconic score. His instrumental themes from Jaws, Close Encounters, and Star Wars all charted on the Billboard Hot 100, with Star Wars' cracking the Top Ten. Over time, he was recognized for his prowess with more poignant material as well, such as Best Song Oscar nominee "Somewhere in My Memory" from Home Alone and his mournful violin theme (performed by Itzhak Perlman) from his Oscar-winning score for Schindler's List (1993). However, he has remained associated across generations for his lush, exciting, romantic music for other worlds, including the first two Jurassic Park films in the '90s, the first three Harry Potter films in the 2000s, and the episodic Star Wars prequels and sequels. In the early 2020s, as he entered his nineties, Williams set to work on his fifth straight entry in the Indiana Jones film franchise. While not quite as prolific in the concert hall realm, he has composed concertos for no fewer than ten different instruments, among dozens of other orchestral and chamber works.

Born February 8, 1932, in Floral Park, New York, Williams was the son of a movie studio musician, and he followed in his father's footsteps by studying music at UCLA and Juilliard. Initially, he pursued a career as a jazz pianist, later working with Henry Mancini to compose the score for the hit television series Peter Gunn. Williams then went solo to pen a number of TV soundtracks for series including Playhouse 90, Wagon Train, and Bachelor Father. In 1959, he ventured into film with Daddy-O, and spent the majority of the 1960s alternating between the silver screen (The Killers, The Plainsman) and its smaller counterpart (Gilligan's Island, Lost in Space, Kraft Suspense Theatre).

In 1968, Williams earned his first Academy Award nomination for his work on Valley of the Dolls. In 1970, he garnered nods for both The Reivers and Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and two years later finally won for Fiddler on the Roof. A slew of Oscar nominations followed, for features including The Poseidon Adventure, Tom Sawyer, and The Towering Inferno. By 1974, he had received his first nomination for best original song, for Cinderella Liberty's "Nice to Be Around," a collaboration with Paul Williams (lyrics).

Over much of his career, two major relationships helped secure Williams' iconic legacy in film and music. In 1974, he teamed with a young filmmaker named Steven Spielberg for the first time on a crime drama titled The Sugarland Express. Over the coming decades, the two frequently re-teamed, often with stunning results, including 1975's Jaws and 1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. His thrilling score for Jaws won an Oscar for original score; Close Encounters was nominated. Williams' other frequent collaborator was George Lucas, beginning with 1977's Star Wars -- another best score Oscar winner. Star Wars' rousing, orchestral opening theme even went to number ten on the Billboard singles chart. He and Lucas soon reunited for 1980's The Empire Strikes Back, the same year Williams took over for the late Arthur Fiedler as the conductor of the Boston Pops.

Back with Spielberg, Williams delivered more of his memorably triumphant melodies for 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark and the next year's E.T. His soaring music for the latter resulted his fourth Academy Award trophy. He was back atop the box office rankings with 1983's Return of the Jedi, the third Star Wars feature. In the meantime, he composed for other filmmakers, turning out scores for films like 1978's Superman and 1983's Yes, Giorgio, which included another Oscar-nominated song ("If We Were in Love"). Among his vast output later in the '80s were contrasting Oscar-nominated scores for Spielberg: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), the World War II drama Empire of the Sun (1987), and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).

The '90s saw Williams work on franchises old and new, beginning with the inaugural Home Alone family comedy in 1990. It resulted in nominations for both score and song ("Somewhere in My Memory, with lyricist Leslie Bricusse). Following a score nomination for Oliver Stone's JFK and a song nod (again with Bricusse) for "When You're Alone" from Spielberg's Hook, he won an Oscar for his next Spielberg collaboration, 1993's Schindler's List, whose haunting theme was performed by violinist Itzhak Perlman. That year also saw the first Jurassic Park film hit theaters featuring a ubiquitous Williams score, as he passed the Boston Pops baton to Keith Lockhart following a 13-year stay. The composer agreed to score George Lucas' Star Wars prequel trilogy as they went into production just before the release of his Oscar-nominated scores for the Spielberg historical dramas Amistad (1997) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace broke the single-day box office record on its opening day in May of 1999.

Williams began work on yet another blockbuster franchise in 2001 with the release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (aka Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone). Mixing winding, aerial melodies with a darkly majestic palette, Williams' initial contribution to that magical universe was nominated for best original score. He followed that with a string of consecutive hits: Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002), Spielberg's Minority Report (2002), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002), and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2003). The composer of multiple Olympic themes, he received the Olympic Order award from the International Olympic Committee in 2003. Films including Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Spielberg's War of the Worlds and Munich followed in 2005, with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull arriving before the end of the decade. Williams was awarded the National Medal of Arts at the White House in 2009.

Regular appearances on the Oscar nominee list continued in the 2010s, with Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin (2011), War Horse (2012), and Lincoln (2013) among them. He received three more Oscar nominations for the Star Wars sequel trilogy, beginning with 2015's The Force Awakens. In 2016, Williams became the first composer to receive the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award. He finished the decade with movies including the Spielberg projects The BFG (2016) and The Post (2017). In 2017, their partnership was anthologized with John Williams & Steven Spielberg: The Ultimate Collection. Two years later, he also collaborated with celebrated violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter on the album Across the Stars, which featured Mutter playing a selection of Williams' film themes; the composer both arranged the music and conducted the Recording Arts Orchestra of Los Angeles for the Deutsche Grammophon release. The ninth episode of the Star Wars saga, The Rise of Skywalker, saw release in 2019. 2022's A Gathering of Friends saw Williams working with cellist Yo-Yo Ma on a set of two concert works, as well as selections from his scores for Schindler’s List, Lincoln, and Munich.

During their first 50 years of working together, John Williams scored all but five of Steven Spielberg's films (1983's Twilight Zone: The Movie, 1985's The Color Purple, 2015's Bridge of Spies, 2018's Ready Player One, and 2021's West Side Story). In 2023, Williams returned to the Indiana Jones film series with his score for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. ~ Marcy Donelson & Jason Ankeny

One of the best-known cellists of his generation and of the recording era overall, Yo-Yo Ma is recognized not only for his technical virtuosity but for his engaging interpretative ability, whether the tone is delicate, plaintive, playful, or impassioned. After breaking through with a collection of Bach cello suites in 1983, his ambitions and his appeal stretched far beyond the classical sphere through popular collaborations with such artists as jazz vocalist Bobby McFerrin (1992's Hush) and bluegrass musicians Stuart Duncan and Chris Thile (2011's The Goat Rodeo Sessions). Within the classical repertoire, his performances have spanned the Baroque era through works of his contemporaries, and among his repeat collaborators are pianist Emanuel Ax, violinist Isaac Stern, and bassist Edgar Meyer. Ma is also founder of the Silk Road Ensemble, a collective of musicians with a multicultural Eurasian focus. He won his 18th Grammy Award in 2017 for Silk Road Ensemble's Sing Me Home, his first in the category of Best World Music Album.

Yo-Yo Ma was born in Paris, France in 1955. The child of two musicians, he began music lessons very early, trying piano and all the string instruments before settling on cello. His first public performance was at the age of five. Ma's family moved to New York when he was seven so he could study with Janos Scholz. Before the age of ten, Ma had performed for Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, and had appeared on television with his sister in a concert led by Leonard Bernstein and on The Tonight Show. Ma became a student of Leonard Rose at Juilliard, but did not complete his studies there. Inspired by seeing the commitment of nonagenarian Pablo Casals at the Marlboro Festival, he enrolled at Harvard to finish his bachelor's degree, graduating in 1976.

Following Murray Perahia and Lynn Harrell, Ma became the third recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize in 1978. A year later, he made his recording debut as main artist with Finzi's Cello Concerto alongside the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He then signed with CBS Masterworks and followed with recordings of Saint-Saëns, Haydn, and Beethoven (Sonatas 1 & 2, with Emanuel Ax), among others, before 1983's J.S. Bach: The 6 Unaccompanied Cello Suites proved to be his breakout. He returned quickly with more Beethoven sonatas with Ax and a Schubert quintet album with the Cleveland Quartet as well as Claude Bolling's Suite for Cello & Jazz Piano Trio. He also recorded an album of Japanese Melodies with accompaniment by bass, percussion, and flute. In 1985, he released Elgar and Walton's cello concertos, performed with André Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra. Some of his other albums in the '80s included recordings with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Lorin Maazel, and the Berlin Philharmonic, and, in 1988, Brahms' Double Concerto with violinist Isaac Stern and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra led by Claudio Abbado. The following year brought Anything Goes: Stephane Grappelli & Yo-Yo Ma Play (Mostly) Cole Porter.

In the 1990s, amid a stream of at-least-annual classical releases, Ma continued to raise his profile with mainstream audiences on crossover albums such as 1992's Hush, with vocalist Bobby McFerrin. Issued by Sony, that record reached the top half of the Billboard 200 and was followed by a duo tour. In 1996, he appeared with bassist Edgar Meyer and violinist Mark O'Connor on the folk-inspired album Appalachian Journey, which went to number one on the Billboard classical chart. The year 1997 saw Soul of the Tango featuring the music of composer Astor Piazzolla, and Ma was the featured soloist on composer Tan Dun's Symphony 1997 (Heaven, Earth, Mankind) and on John Williams' score for the film Seven Years in Tibet. That year, he also appeared on the soundtrack to the documentary mini-series Liberty!, which featured O'Connor along with Ma, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, and singer/songwriter James Taylor. In 1998, he returned to the Bach suites with Inspired by Bach: The Cello Suites, recorded for six short films in collaboration with director Atom Egoyan, ice dancers Torvill and Dean, dancer Mark Morris, and other artists. He then recorded 1999's Simply Baroque with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, and they followed it a year later with Simply Baroque II. Also in 2000, he reunited with O'Connor and Meyer for Appalachian Journey (another classical number one) and with Tan Dun for the soundtrack to Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. After establishing the Silk Road Ensemble to bring together musicians from diverse cultural backgrounds along the ancient Eurasian trade route, he issued Silk Road Journeys in 2001. Credited as Yo-Yo Ma & the Silk Road Ensemble, they presented music such as a Mongolian love song, traditional Chinese songs, and Finnish folk songs. That year, Ma was awarded the National Medal of the Arts by the NEA.

In 2002, Sony Classical released Yo-Yo Ma Plays the Music of John Williams, an original recording produced and conducted by Williams. That year, Silk Road Ensemble cracked the Billboard 200 with Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet, and Ma's cello could be heard on Philip Glass' score for the film Naqoyqatsi. Featuring over a dozen guests, including bossa nova singer Rosa Passos and the guitar duo of Sergio & Odair Assad, Obrigado Brazil arrived the following year and returned him to the top of the classical chart. He released a concert version of the album in 2004, a year that also saw Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon, Vivaldi's Cello, and Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone. The latter two charted on the Billboard 200. A year later, he appeared with Itzhak Perlman on the John Williams film score Memoirs of a Geisha. It, too, landed on the U.S. album chart. Silk Road Ensemble's New Impossibilities was recorded at Symphony Center with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2007, and 2008's Yo-Yo Ma & Friends: Songs of Joy & Peace featured collaborations with names like Dave Brubeck, Renée Fleming, and Diana Krall, just to name a few. It was Ma's highest-charting album to that point, reaching number 20 on the Billboard 200. After an appearance at Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration, he climbed two spots higher with 2011's The Goat Rodeo Sessions, an album with Meyer, Stuart Duncan, and Chris Thile that also marked Ma's debut on the Bluegrass Albums chart. That year, Ma was also a recipient of a Kennedy Center Honor, the Glenn Gould Prize, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Another Silk Roads Ensemble album, A Playlist Without Borders, followed in 2013. Issued in 2015, Songs from the Arc of Life presented well-known classical tunes such as Schubert's (and Bach-Gounod's) Ave Maria and Brahms' Lullaby. It went to the top of the classical chart, as did Silk Road Ensemble's 2016 LP Sing Me Home. His next classical number one came just a year later with Bach: Trios, a set of keyboard pieces rearranged for Ma on cello, Meyer on bass, and Thile on mandolin. In 2017, the Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma performed the music for the Ken Burns-Lynn Novick documentary series The Vietnam War, and Ma collaborated with chamber orchestra the Knights on Azul. It offered a performance of the Osvaldo Golijov concerto alongside pieces by Dvorák, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Sufjan Stevens, among others. In 2019, Ma issued Six Evolutions: Bach Cello Suites, his planned final studio recording of the famed suites. He then reunited with Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer, and Stuart Duncan for 2020's Not Our First Goat Rodeo. During the coronavirus lockdowns, Ma and Ax held spontaneous recitals for essential workers. When regular concerts resumed in 2021, the two joined violinist Leonidas Kavakos at Tanglewood with an impressive trio arrangement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 2. Based on that performance, the trio started a successful series of recordings, Beethoven for Three, in 2022. ~ Marcy Donelson & Patsy Morita

The world-renowned New York Philharmonic (officially the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York) is America's oldest symphony orchestra, a prime example of high standards of performance to musicians and audiences everywhere.

Beginning in the 1820s, there were several attempts to found an orchestra in the city, the more successful of which were the Philharmonic Symphony Society (established in 1842) and the New York Symphony (established in 1878). The Philharmonic had a reputation for conservatism and high standards, hiring primarily European conductors, such as Gustav Mahler. The Symphony seemed more ambitious and interested in new music. It received patronage from Andrew Carnegie, enabling the building of Carnegie Hall (1891), with an inaugural concert led by Walter Damrosch and Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky. The Philharmonic Society finally merged with the Symphony in 1928, during the tenure of Arturo Toscanini, who helped it establish its world-class reputation. Many great conductors would follow, among them: Leonard Bernstein (1958-1969, when he was named conductor laureate), Kurt Masur (1991-2002, when he was named music director emeritus), Alan Gilbert (2009-2017), and as of the 2018-2019 season, Jaap van Zweden. Under Bernstein, the orchestra's reputation blossomed in new ways. He brought a youthful excitement to the music, engaging new audience members, particularly through television appearances. The advent of stereo recording allowed the Philharmonic to re-record much of the standard canon. It also got a new performance venue: Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.

Many of the Philharmonic's directors have had to deal with threats to its standing among the world's great orchestras: competition on stages and on records from other, strong American orchestras; internal and external economic difficulties; and balancing the traditional with new music in a way that satisfies its core audience. However, commissioning and introducing new works is a long-held tradition. Memorable premieres include Dvorák's New World Symphony; Gershwin's Concerto in F; the Pulitzer Prize-winning On the Transmigration of Souls by John Adams; Esa-Pekka Salonen's Piano Concerto; and The Jungle, Wynton Marsalis' fourth symphony. The Philharmonic commissioned a new work by Julia Wolfe, Fire in My Mouth, giving its premiere in 2019 and receiving a Grammy nomination for its recording. In 2020, the Philharmonic inaugurated Project 19 to commission new music from 19 women composers, named such to mark the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Among the first of these commissions was Tania León's Stride, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2021.

The orchestra has performed in more than 430 cities in 63 countries, which includes its first tour after merging when Toscanini took it to Europe in 1930 and a trip to the U.S.S.R. in 1959. In 2008, Lorin Maazel led it in a historic concert in Pyongyang, North Korea, the first significant cultural visit to the country by an American organization since the 1950s. The Philharmonic hosts several free concerts each year, operates outreach programs in the city, and partners with select music schools in the U.S. and China.

The Philharmonic's recording history dates back to 1917, counting over 2,000 releases, many of them award winners, with hundreds of them available at any given time. As many other orchestras have done, it has created its own label, releasing live concert recordings physically, and was the first to do so digitally as well, also offering podcasts and other new media. Its Leon Levy Digital Archives contain every program printed since 1842, plus scores marked by musicians and conductors. After a fundraising campaign to rehabilitate the Avery Fisher Hall in 2014, the venue was renamed the David Geffen Hall in 2015. Following significant renovations, it reopened for the 2022-2023 season. ~ Patsy Morita