Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, July 2, 1994                   TAG: 9407020074
SECTION: SPECTATOR                    PAGE: S-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES                                LENGTH: Medium

WILLIAMS OPENS 25TH YEAR OF `POPS,' BUT IT'S NO SWAN SONG

Williams has resigned as conductor of the Boston Pops, opting to devote more time to his main occupation, composing film scores. In his 15th year with the orchestra, he is now billed as laureate conductor "though I told the trustees I was too young (62) for a title like that."

"I wouldn't want to phrase (this season) as a swan song, because I would hope that I'll maintain a long relationship with the town and the orchestra," he said from Boston in a telephone interview.

"I have been typically doing eight to 10 weeks of concerts, six concerts a week, including those at Tanglewood and at Christmas. So I have been doing upward of 60 concerts a year.

"Considering all the traveling involved, I was starting to feel at about year 10 into this relationship that it was really beginning to be more work and traveling than one sensibly could be expected to continue and still feel good."

Last December, he decided to retire as conductor and let someone else take over the major responsibility of about 40 concerts a year. The Pops is hunting for his successor.

Williams will open the season Friday with his "Schindler's List" music, together with his collaborator, violinist Itzhak Perlman. In March, Williams won his fifth Academy Award for the score.

Asked about the responsibility of working on the Steven Spielberg film, Williams said:

"When you start shooting a film, there's never any certainty that it's going to be right or good. Every film that we begin to make starts out to be a masterpiece. Life being what it is, they never are. Things go wrong, and you do the best you can with the subject.

"In this case, there was a certain amount of blessing attached with the result. I think it's a particularly fine document of that history. Survivors of the Holocaust who have seen it felt that it was fair and accurate; we didn't have any of them say it was sanitized or Hollywoodized.

"In the usual sort of popcorn moviemaking world, we don't get that kind of gratification very often. As wonderful as making `Indiana Jones' is, it's entertainment on a different level."

After Williams concludes his summer duties with the Pops, he expects to undertake another movie score, probably "The Bridges of Madison County," which Spielberg will produce but not direct. Williams has been scoring since the 1960s, when he worked on numerous TV shows, earning a couple of Emmys.

He started modestly in films, with such titles as "I Passed for White," "Bachelor Flat" and "The Killers." His most famous partnership began with Spielberg's first major film, "Sugarland Express," and has continued through the blockbusters "Jaws," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial," the Indiana Jones trilogy and "Jurassic Park."

Williams also scored the megahit "Star Wars" trilogy, "Superman" and "Home Alone." In all, he has had 20 Oscar nominations and 15 for Grammies. Not bad for a man who played jazz piano to finance his UCLA and Juilliard education.

Writing a score is far from a leisurely process, he explained:

"We are under a kind of time pressure all the time. A lot of self-criticism, revisionism and rethinking - these are luxuries. Post-production schedules in Hollywood being what they are, we're not given these luxuries very often.

"The minute I know I'm going to get an assignment, I go to the piano immediately and start to sketch ideas and themes and notions about how to deal with the subject. I use every moment I have - it's never really enough."

He prefers not to read scripts, reasoning that they may not match the finished product.

"I like to go into a projection room completely naked, so to speak, with a clean slate, and just react to what's there," he said. "It's a better motivation rhythmically, thematically and atmosphere-wise for a composer than a script is."

Depending on the studio's urgency to rush into release, Williams has two to three months to compose, conduct and edit the score. "Schindler's List" required one hour of orchestral music.

"It's a very demanding profession," he commented. "People can't imagine how many seven-day weeks and late-nights and all that goes into it. I've always joked that to be successful in Hollywood, you don't have to be good. Just strong."