John Williams Reimagined

A Note from Robert Townson

Producing this album and writing a liner note for it in 2024 is such an extraordinary privilege. In so many ways, it brings me full circle in my career. My introduction to film music began with John Williams and his score for Star Wars in May of 1977. John was 45 back then, and I was 11. I, along with millions of others around the world, were being introduced to the wonders of a symphony orchestra through this music. 47 years later, John Williams is the most-nominated, living Oscar recipient in the world, now with 54!! While he has often been referred to as “America’s composer,”, this is needlessly limiting. It is much more accurate to call him the world’s composer. After all, his recent triumphs include concerts and albums with both the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras. He had a trip to Japan for concerts in Tokyo and Matsumoto, and various American stops in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Washington, Boston, Philadelphia, and his annual three nights of concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. There was also a concert in Milan with the Filarmonica della Scala. In 2024, he celebrates his 92nd birthday. He is still composing, with scores for The Fabelmans (Oscar nomination #53) and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (the most recent and 54th nomination), along with a new Violin Concerto for Anne-Sophie Mutter, not to mention the full Across the Stars album with various other special arrangements for Anne-Sophie. He has given the world so much, and for such a long time. He has been an inspiration for countless musicians, composers, producers, directors, filmmakers of all disciplines, as well as music fans all over the world, pursuing all manner of unrelated careers. John himself simply wakes up each day and does the best work that he can to bring more music into our world. He seems to draw considerable inspiration from his own musician friends and feels a genuine drive to create for them. We all continue to benefit from John’s good health and tireless passion for music.

This is the climate where I started thinking about a new album project that would be unlike anything I had ever recorded before. It would be a John Williams album that would also be unlike any other. The inspiration for it came from my awareness of the extraordinary flute solos John has featured in so many of his film scores … from Jane Eyre to Star Wars. From The River to War Horse. I wanted to shine a light on this particular aspect of his writing, but not within the context of a full symphony orchestra. I wanted a much more intimate setting than that. Los Angeles-based flutist Sara Andon has taken her flute playing around the world, in addition to her ever-active recording and concert schedule in Los Angeles. My idea was to reconnect Sara with her frequent duo-partner, the great Italian pianist and Cliburn gold-medalist, Simone Pedroni. Simone’s own passion for the music of John Williams is also a lifelong one. He is even director of an annual classical music festival in Alagna, Italy with the tag-line “From Bach to Williams.” But my vision for the new recording was not for a duo. It was for a trio. And to round out our threesome I knew that it could only be the great Cécilia Tsan who, in addition to playing on countless John Williams soundtrack recordings for many years, is also a noted soloist and artistic director of her own classical music recital series in Los Angeles, (Mount Wilson Observatory – Sunday Afternoon Concerts in the Dome). This would be the dream ensemble that I hoped to create this program for.

In short, my concept was to present John’s music in a classical recital-type setting of John Williams: Music for Flute, Cello and Piano.

A key detail to what I wanted to do, however, was to only proceed with the project if it had John Williams’ full support and approval. My intent was to make this recording for him. I made this point clear to the three musicians who were all enthusiastically on board from the moment I first shared with them what I had in mind. Making the pitch or proposal to John Williams, however, did not, by any means, have a foregone result. Having his music newly arranged for an ensemble different from the way he wrote it is not something that John has made a practice of. In fact, it is not something that he liked the idea of at all and almost never agreed to. I had a very complete idea of what I wanted to do, at this early stage. I had a full track list for both discs of a 2-CD set. I also had an idea for how I wanted to present this to John, which was not to simply explain or describe it. However good an explanation I might offer would be, would pale compared to letting him hear something and share with him a concrete example of what I had in mind. This would not be a mock-up. I had Simone proceed with his transcription work for both movements from Jane Eyre, as well at the piece In Search of Unicorns from Images. The next step was to record all three pieces remotely, with each of our three musicians. Our recording engineer, Gabe Burch, would then mix the three pieces and I would even have Patricia Sullivan complete her work and master each of them. That is what I sent to John in early January of 2022, along with my complete track list, to hopefully receive his blessing and approval for the project to proceed. On a joyous day, two weeks later, I received his approval on my complete track list and for these three musicians to be exclusively sanctioned to record the new transcriptions for an album and to perform them live. This was an absolute dream. It was unprecedented and was everything that I had hoped for and, in fact needed, for this album to exist as it does. Now the work was really to begin!

Simone Pedroni, in addition to being one of the finest classical pianists in the world, is also a master when it comes to transcribing and adapting full orchestral scores to an ensemble of two or three. Aiding him in this enormous task was a big box of unpublished scores I received from John Williams’ personal music library. This, of course, is invaluable for achieving total accuracy in preparing the new charts.

It can’t be overstated what an enormous task the music preparation work for this album was going to be for Simone. And it would be astoundingly complicated. In Simone’s own words, “The transcription process was divided into several stages. First, an in-depth study of the original scores, then, knowing the possibilities of the three instruments available (piano, flute and cello) to “reorganize” the available material without ever betraying the original, bringing the soloists to the limit of their virtuosic possibilities. The biggest challenge was to give the feeling that the pieces were originally conceived for trio.”

“The choice of repertoire was oriented towards a very wide range of the Williams catalog, including many rarities, but excluding those pieces that have a complete sense and cannot be reduced to a chamber ensemble, such as the main titles of ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Superman.’ A particular challenge was to arrange those works that had never been performed live such as ‘In Search of Unicorns’ from Robert Altman’s ‘Images’, where there are several aleatoric sections in which the three instruments have to improvise together.”

Work continued for eight months, with Simone completing the mountain of new arrangements just in time for an August 2022 trip to Los Angeles for recording sessions with Sara and Cécilia. We had a day off in the middle of our week of recording sessions and we took particularly good advantage of that day. John Williams invited the trio to visit him at his office and to perform a few of the new pieces for him privately! This was an unspeakably magical and meaningful experience for the musicians and also for them to receive such valuable feedback from the Maestro.

What resulted from that week of recording is what you can now hear on this album. John Williams Reimagined is truly a dream project for all of us. It has been recorded with so much love and appreciation for John, personally, and for his music. I suspect that it will be the listeners who know John Williams’ music the very best, who will be the most surprised by this recording; the performances and the selections. We, of course, have some of John’s most famous themes, but we have also included pieces that have not been performed since their original recording sessions of upwards of thirty, forty or fifty years ago! This is a deep dive journey through John’s entire career. Hearing some of these pieces performed so beautifully and live, was incredibly moving and emotional for me, and I hope that it will be for you.

After we premiered the live John Williams Reimagined concert in Rome in October 2023, the trio had performances in Krakow, Rochester, NY at the Eastman School of Music, Dusseldorf, London and Paris. As of April 2026, the next performances will be in Tenerife at the 20th Anniversary of Fimucité in July.

Warner Classics Press Release:

Star Wars. Memoirs of a Geisha. Schindler’s List. Far and Away. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The list goes on and on. Legendary film composer John Williams has for decades reigned as the most celebrated film composer of all time. But John Williams Reimagined is Williams like you’ve never heard him before.

John Williams’ themes and orchestrations have resonated in moviegoers’ minds for generations. Steven Spielberg called him “the greatest of all maestros.” George Lucas once told him, “You brought my stories to life beyond my wildest dreams.” For film score producer par excellence Robert Townson, it was the “extraordinary flute solos John has featured in so many of his film scores” that triggered the idea of “a John Williams album…unlike any other.”

But could the album Townson imagined—scored for chamber trio of flute, cello, and piano—become reality? With a long career of film score productions to his credit, the producer knew that Williams seldom approves new arrangements of music from his iconic scores.

Townson had more than a dream, though. He had a dream ensemble in mind: flutist Sara Andon, cellist CéciliaTsan, and pianist Simone Pedroni. So, with no guarantee they’d ever see the light of day, he enlisted Pedroni to create three sample transcriptions; record them with the three musicians; and sent them to the composer. Much to their delight, Williams approved Townson’s full track list and sanctioned the trio to exclusively record and perform the full set.

Pedroni, for his part, describes the orchestral color of John Williams’ film scores as “always masterful—which made me think that it is impossible to do better.” Yet as the pianist worked on the transcriptions, he realized that “Williams’ compositional genius…pure, deep, and great in itself” was precisely what would enable him to reimagine the selections—some iconic, some relatively obscure—for the chamber trio Townson had in mind.

The result is a revelation.

Familiar themes pepper the track list, intermingling with lesser-known music. “Princess Leia’s Theme” from Star Wars made a lasting impression on Sara Andon when she first heard it as a child. The score for Memoirs of a Geisha features cello solos that Williams wrote for his friend Yo-Yo Ma, and that translate perfectly for CéciliaTsan, who is a childhood friend of Ma. The trio premiered their John Williams Reimagined concert recital at the Rome Film Music Festival in 2023.

The selections cover more than half a century—from Williams’ Emmy-winning score for the 1970 telefilm Jane Eyre—Townson’s original inspiration for the album—to the main theme of 2022’s The Fabelmans, one of over two dozen collaborations between Williams and Spielberg, which affords the brilliant Pedroni a solo piano spotlight. From the canon of iconic Williams scores over this timespan, the two-CD set includes selections from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, The Witches of Eastwick, Jurassic Park, The Accidental Tourist, Dracula, The Sugarland Express, Jane Eyre, War Horse, Hook, The Patriot, and more, not to mention the Star Wars saga, Schindler’s List, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

During the recording sessions in Los Angeles, John Williams invited the trio to perform a selection of the new arrangements for him privately in his writing studio at Amblin. This was in 2022, during Williams’ 90th birthday year, and he was being celebrated all over the world. Following the performance of “The Face of Pan” from Hook, the composer was very moved. He warmly remarked, “This is one of my best birthday gifts,” and gave each of the musicians a hug. Sara, Cécilia and Simone will remember this moment with immense joy and heartfelt gratitude for the rest of their lives.

Film music producer Robert Townson founded his first record label in 1985 and has produced nearly 1,500 film music recordings over the past four decades. He has worked with a galaxy of eminent composers, from Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein and Alexandre Desplat to Hans Zimmer, Lalo Schifrin, Danny Elfman, and of course John Williams.

Flutist Sara Andon is a versatile international soloist and recording artist equally at home with symphonic and chamber music, opera, ballet, new music, jazz, and Broadway. She has performed with top-tier orchestras and is heard on countless film, TV and video game scores. She has recorded with such composers as Brian Tyler, John Debney, Marco Beltrami, and Jeff Russo and for labels Sony Classical and Varèse Sarabande.

Cellist Cécilia Tsan, winner of the Debussy Prize at the Paris International Competition, performs as a soloist and chamber musician in her home country of France and abroad. She has recorded hundreds of movie soundtracks in Los Angeles by composers such as John Williams, Randy Newman, James Horner,
and Alan Silvestri.

Pianist, conductor and arranger Simone Pedroni launched his solo career winning the gold medal at the Van Cliburn Competition in 1993. He has performed in sold-out concerts throughout the world, working with artists such as Yehudi Menuhin, Zubin Mehta, and Leonard Slatkin, and recorded for labels including Sony Classical and Decca Records.