Film Night at Tanglewood with John Williams

I hope you already know who Steven Spielberg is. He’s the guy who’s directed such movies you may have heard of like E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jurassic Park, the Indiana Jones movies and many more.

Well, the guy who wrote the music scores to most of his films and a few others you may have heard along the way, like you know… a small film franchise called Star Wars, is named John Williams.

John Williams was a long time conductor of the Boston Pops in the 80s and 90s and for the last 10 years he has come back to conduct the Pops at their summer home in Tanglewood, Massachusetts for Film Night.

He performs his own works as well as other famous film scores. This year he did mostly his own selections along with a score from the original Robin Hood movie and another from a movie I had never seen. They changed the last number of the first half and strayed off course a little. They played Olympic Fanfare in honor of the Olympics coming up next month. None of us got upset that it had nothing to do with the movies. The second half, however, was all Indy.

In the writeup for the event, it was billed as John Williams with special guests. I assumed that since it was movie night it would be other composers or something. The first song of the second act was “Anything Goes” as sung in the foreign language at the beginning of Temple of Doom. A whole chorus ensemble sang along with it and the lead didn’t come out on stage until after the song was over. John Williams introduces none other than the original singer and female star of Temple of Doom, Kate Capshaw! Cool guest, right?

Well if Kate Capshaw is there, it makes sense that her husband is there too right? So he then introduces Steven Spielberg! Spielberg is on stage the rest of the night introducing all the rest of the songs and giving little tidbits of info about the pieces and movies. It was awesome.

Throughout the night they had a screen come down on certain pieces and show the film or montages along with the music.

The Raiders March was supposed to be the last piece, but of course there are unannounced encores and the first was Marion’s Theme. And then they bring out Marion herself, Karen Allen! So cool.

The E.T. theme was the final number of the night which ended a magical evening. We had so much fun we’re ready to go again next year!