EPIC JOHN WILLIAMS
Jerry Junkin, Artistic Director & Conductor
In his 28th season as Artistic Director and Conductor of the Dallas Winds, Jerry Junkin is recognized as one of the world’s most highly regarded wind conductors. He has served as Music Director and Conductor of the Hong Kong Wind Philharmonia since 2003, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Senzoku Gakuen College of Music Wind Symphony in Tokyo since 2007. Additionally, 2021-2022 marks his 34th year on the faculty of The University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the Vincent R. and Jane D. DiNino Chair for the Director of Bands. There, he also holds the title of University Distinguished Teaching Professor. Previously, he served on the faculties of both the University of Michigan and the University of South Florida. In addition to his responsibilities as Professor of Music and Conductor of the Texas Wind Ensemble, he serves as Head of the Division of Conducting and Ensembles and teaches courses in conducting and wind band literature. He is a recipient of multiple teaching awards, and students of Mr. Junkin hold major positions throughout the world.
Performances under the direction of Mr. Junkin have won the praise of such notable musicians as John Corigliano, David Del Tredici, Gunther Schuller, Karel Husa, William Kraft, Jacob Druckman and Michael Colgrass, among many others. Mr. Junkin has released over 30 compact disc recordings for the Reference, Klavier and Naxos labels. The New York Times named his release on the Reference Recordings label, Bells for Stokowski, one of the best classical CD’s of the year. His performance of Circus Maximus with The University of Texas Wind Ensemble was released on the world’s first Blu Ray audio disc in 5.1 surround sound by Naxos and was nominated for a GRAMMY. During the summer of 2014, he led The University of Texas Wind Ensemble on a four week tour around the world.
Mr. Junkin is an enthusiastic advocate of public school music education, having conducted All-State bands and festivals in forty-eight states and on five continents. He spends his summers in residence at the Interlochen Arts Camp in Michigan, as well as appearing at major music festivals throughout the world.
Mr. Junkin has served as President of the Big XII Band Director’s Association and is a member of the Board of Directors of The John Philip Sousa Foundation, is Past-President of the American Bandmasters Association, and is Past President of the College Band Directors National Association. Regularly making guest appearances with ensembles such as the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra and the Taipei Symphonic Winds, he continues to conduct throughout the United States in addition to multiple appearances in Japan, China, and Europe. In 2005, he was presented the Grainger Medallion by the International Percy Grainger Society in recognition of his championing of Grainger’s works, and he has received numerous career awards from Kappa Kappa Psi, Phi Beta Mu, and the Midwest Clinic, among others. Mr. Junkin is a Yamaha Master Educator.
Tuesday, February 15, 2022 – 7:30pm
Meyerson Symphony Center + Livestream
Program
The Cowboys Overture
arr. Jay Bocook
Scherzo for Motorcycle and Band from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
arr. Paul Lavender
The Flight to Neverland from Hook
arr. Paul Lavender
Adventures on Earth from E.T. (The Extra-Terrestrial)
arr. Paul Lavender
– INTERMISSION –
Star Wars Epic
1. Star Wars (Main Title)
arr. Stephen Bulla
2. Yoda’s Theme
arr. Donald Hunsberger
3. Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme) from The Empire Strikes Back
arr. Stephen Bulla
4. Princess Leia’s Theme
arr. Hunsberger
5. The Adventures of Han from Solo: A Star Wars Story
arr. Lavender
6. Scherzo for X-Wings
arr. Lavender
7. The Jedi Steps and Finale from Star Wars: The Force Awakens
arr. Lavender
(All works by John Williams)
Dallas Winds Personnel
PICCOLO
Jennifer Wheeler
FLUTE
Margaret Shin Fischer, Principal
Kathy Johnson
OBOE
Sharon Lacey, Principal
Kelly Diaz
ENGLISH HORN
Aryn Mitchell
E♭ CLARINET
Mary Druhan
B♭ CLARINET
Deborah Ungaro Fabian, Concertmaster
Sharon Knox Deuby, Associate Principal
Ricky Reeves
Alex Yeselson
Jeanie Murrow
Andre Canabou
Bonnie Dieckmann
Mark Arritola
Mary Druhan
BASS CLARINET
Mickey Owens
CONTRA CLARINET
Robin Owens
BASSOON
Laura Bennett Cameron, Principal
Marty Spake
CONTRABASSOON
Leslie Massenburg
ALTO SAXOPHONE
Donald Fabian, Principal
David Lovrien
TENOR SAXOPHONE
Roy E. Allen
BARITONE SAXOPHONE
John Sweeden
HORN
Susan Frazier, Principal
Reese Farnell
Kirstin Schularick
Sarrah McCoy-Black
Eric Breon
TRUMPET
Brian Shaw, Principal
James Sims
Richard Adams
Daniel Kelly
Jared Broussard
Jared Hunt
TROMBONE
Grant Futch, Principal
Jonathan Gill
Barney McCollum
EUPHONIUM
Grant Jameson, Principal
David Strand
TUBA
Jason Wallace, Principal
Nick Beltchev
STRING BASS
Andrew Goins
PIANO/CELESTE
Brian Allison
HARP
Alison Read
TIMPANI
Steve Kimple
PERCUSSION
Roland Muzquiz, Principal
Lane Harder
Brandon Kelly
Steve McDonald
Bill Klymus
Nate Collins
PERSONNEL MANAGER
Gigi Sherrell Norwood
MUSIC LIBRARIAN
Chrystal Stevens
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR
Ramon Musquiz
FOUNDER / EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Kim Campbell
EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT
Grace Lovrien
DIRECTOR OF CONCERT OPERATIONS
Gigi Sherrell Norwood
DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION
Todd Toney
BOOKKEEPER
Lenore Ladwig Scott
Program Notes
John Towner Williams (b. February 8, 1932)
One of the most popular and successful composers of the modern age, John Williams has won five Academy Awards, 17 Grammy Awards, three Golden Globes, two Emmys and five awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, among others. Best known for his film scores and ceremonial music, Williams is also a noted composer of concert works, and a renowned conductor.
IMDb lists 280 film credits for Williams as the composer, arranger, or music consultant. His composing credits include the scores for Saving Private Ryan, Lincoln, Amistad, Seven Years in Tibet, The Lost World, Rosewood, Sleepers, Nixon, Sabrina, Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, Home Alone, Far and Away, JFK, Hook, Presumed Innocent, Always, Born on the Fourth of July, the Indiana Jones series, The Accidental Tourist, Empire of the Sun, The Witches of Eastwick, the Star Wars series, E. T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Superman, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, and Goodbye Mr. Chips among many others.
Born in New York, Williams and his family moved to Los Angeles in 1948. He attended UCLA and studied composition with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. After service in the Air Force and a stint at the Juilliard School, Williams worked as a jazz pianist and recording artist. When he returned to Los Angeles, he began his career in film, first as a pianist, then as a composer, working with such musical legends as Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman, and Franz Waxman.
Williams conducted many of his own film scores. In 1980 he was appointed conductor and artistic director of the Boston Pops Orchestra, succeeding Arthur Fiedler. He continues as Laureate Conductor of that ensemble and makes seasonal appearances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has guest conducted the New York Philharmonic, the National Symphony Orchestra, the U. S. Army Herald Trumpets, the Joint Armed Forces Chorus, and the Choral Arts Society of Washington.
The Cowboys Overture
In this 1972 John Wayne western, an aging rancher and trail boss (Wayne) recruits a cadre of young boys to help him drive his cattle to market, in the face of financial disaster, rustlers, and the oncoming winter. Williams’ score captures the adventurous spirit of the film, as well as the majesty of the wide-open plains of the American West. It was this ability in The Cowboys, as well as in the score for The Reivers (1969), which caught Stephen Spielberg’s ear, prompting the young director to tap Williams as the composer for Spielberg’s first feature film, The Sugarland Express.
It was the beginning of one of the longest-running partnerships in modern film history. Continuing through 2017’s The Post, Williams has scored thirty-one of Steven Spielberg’s full-length feature films and is listed as a music consultant on Spielberg’s 2021 remake of West Side Story.
Flight to Neverland from Hook
It sounded like a good idea. Steven Spielberg would direct a fantasy adventure based on Peter Pan, with Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts, Bob Hoskins, and Dame Maggie Smith. What could possibly go wrong? Despite the hype, the film garnered less than enthusiastic reviews. The music, however, earned John Williams another Oscar nomination.
Adventures on Earth from E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial
In 1982, Steven Spielberg took a story about his own imaginary childhood friend and spun it into the highest-grossing film of the 1980s, which has been hailed as “the greatest science fiction film ever made.” E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial is an adventure tale told from a child’s point of view, as hero Elliot befriends and tries to protect E. T., the little alien botanist who follows him home. The soaring score, with its triumphant bicycle chase finale, won the 1982 Academy Award for Best Original Score.
Star Wars (Main Title) from Star Wars
Yoda’s Theme
Imperial March from The Empire Strikes Back
Princess Leia’s Theme
The Adventures of Han from Solo: A Star Wars Story
Scherzo for X Wings
The Jedi Steps and Finale from Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Film music in the 1960s drew on a range of styles, from jazz and Avant Garde to rock, and pop. While there were a few orchestral scores for films like Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, those films were aimed at the WWII generation. As the Baby Boomers came of age in the 1970s, they had not yet found a film, or a film score, to define their generation. Until Star Wars.
From that first glimpse of the Imperial Star Destroyer, Star Wars gave Boomers something absolutely new: spectacular special effects; heroes instead of anti-heroes; a philosophy that resonated; and a soundtrack to launch even the wildest heroic fantasies. Establishment critics scoffed at this low-budget science fiction film from a virtually unknown director, which made it just that much more fun for the slightly post-counterculture generation who came of age between Woodstock and the disco era.
Although Williams had been composing film scores since the early 1960s, it was Star Wars that made him the most beloved American composer of his time. Drawing inspiration from Hollywood’s Golden Age, and such composers as Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Franz Waxman, Williams re-introduced the idea of musical themes to identify characters and didn’t shy away from sweepingly melodic romanticism.
The result was grand, and an industry-wide game changer. The film quickly surpassed Jaws as the top grossing film in history, and still stands as the third highest-grossing film in the world. The two-LP album for Star Wars became the best-selling score-only soundtrack of all time. Williams won the Oscar for Best Original Score in 1977, and the American Film Institute ranks Star Wars at #1 on its list of best film scores ever.
Williams expanded on his work when the sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, was released in1980, introducing Imperial March as a theme for Darth Vader. In 2012, George Lucas sold the rights to the Star Wars franchise to The Walt Disney Company. Disney immediately began plans to complete Lucas’ original vision of three interrelated film trilogies by creating three new films set after the conclusion of the original Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back/Return of the Jedi trilogy. As he had with the six previous Star Wars films, Williams stepped forward to compose the score for the final Star Wars trilogy and for several spin-off films that followed.
Although he revived themes from the original films for such characters as Luke, Leia, and Han, he also developed new music to support new characters and settings. “It’s all a continuation of an initial set of ideas,” he said of the process. “It’s a bit like adding paragraphs to a letter that’s been going on for a number of years.”
–program notes written by Gigi Sherrell Norwood