At the Liberty Weekend Celebration in New York Harbor on July 4, 1986…..conductor John Williams And the Boston Pops Orchestra performs throughout the entire USA Independence Day celebration….with one particular segment that of the celebration that provides a rousing American feeling while performing two famous John Phillip Souza marches….The Stars and Stripes Forever and The Washington Post March…..as there are not any two more patriotic American songs and marches that these.
John Philip Sousa (November 6, 1854 – March 6, 1932) was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era….known primarily for American military marches….and because of his mastery of march composition….Souza is known as “The March King” or the “American March King”….due to his British counterpart, Kenneth J. Alford also being known by the former nickname. Among his best-known marches are “The Stars and Stripes Forever”, which is the National March of the United States of America….“Semper Fidelis”, which is the official march of the United States Marine Corps….“The Liberty Bell”, which is used as the theme for Monty Python’s Flying Circus….“The Thunderer” and “The Washington Post”…..as two of five are performed by John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra in this video herewith.
John Williams (born February 8, 1932) is an American composer, conductor and pianist….with a career spanning over six decades….in which he has composed some of the most popular, recognizable and critically acclaimed film scores in cinematic history….including those of the Star Wars series, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the Indiana Jones series, the first two Home Alone films, Hook, the first two Jurassic Park films, Schindler’s List and the first three Harry Potter films.
Williams has been associated with director Steven Spielberg since 1974….while composing music for all but four of his feature films––Duel, The Color Purple, Bridge of Spies, and Ready Player One. Other works by Williams include theme music for the 1984 Summer Olympic Games, NBC Sunday Night Football, “The Mission” theme used by NBC News and Seven News in Australia, the television series Lost in Space and Land of the Giants and the incidental music for the first season of Gilligan’s Island. Williams has also composed numerous classical concertos and other works for orchestral ensembles and solo instruments. He served as the Boston Pops’s principal conductor from 1980 to 1993, and is currently the orchestra’s laureate conductor.
Williams has won 24 Grammy Awards, seven British Academy Film Awards, five Academy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards. With 51 Academy Award nominations, Williams is the second most-nominated individual, after Walt Disney. In 2005, the American Film Institute selected Williams’s score to 1977’s Star Wars as the greatest American film score of all time. The soundtrack to Star Wars was additionally preserved by the Library of Congress into the National Recording Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
Williams was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl’s Hall of Fame in 2000….and was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004 and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2016. Williams composed the score for eight of the top 20 highest-grossing films at the U.S. box office….which serves as to why we consider this combination of John Williams the conductor of The Boston Pops and the music of The March King John Phillip Souza to be nothing but “pure gold” in our treasures chest of memories here at ImaSportsphile.
