John Williams / Celebration

On this day in classical music: John Williams’ “Cowboys Overture” was given its premiere by the Boston Pops in 1980. The composer conducted the premiere. Williams has become one of Hollywood’s most respected and talented film composers during a career that spans more than a half century. Among his hits are the scores to such films as the “Star Wars” saga, “Jaws,” “Superman,” the Indiana Jones films, “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” “Home Alone,” “Hook,” “Jurassic Park,” “Schindler’s List,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “War Horse” and the first three “Harry Potter” films. Williams has also composed music for four Olympic Games, NBC Sunday Night Football, the NBC Nightly News and the Statue of Liberty’s rededication. Williams succeeded Arthur Fiedler as conductor of the Boston Pops and remained with the prestigious ensemble from 1980 to 1993. Williams has won five Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, seven British Academy Film Awards and 21 Grammy Awards. He was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004. Listen to the composer conduct his “Cowboys Overture.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPCpccUo8Lw

On this day in the musical theatre: Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt’s musical “Celebration” opened on Broadway in 1969. The musical fable explores the contrasts between youth and old age, innocence and corruption, love and ambition, and poverty and wealth. The musical, which followed other Jones and Schmidt successes “The Fantasticks,” “110 in the Shade” and “I Do! I Do!,” failed to attract a large following and closed after 110 performances. Listen to Keith Charles perform the opening number from “Celebration.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gH1bBOjoVU

Musical musings: I wish Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt hadn’t been working on “Celebration” for so long. The new musical has been the dream of this very talented team and they’ve worked at it, on and off, for close to eight years. But a lot has happened to the theatre — and us — during those years and “Celebration” has the look of its age. Everything about it, from the concept to the production to the sound of the orchestra is small scale. Finally, it has the kind of loose organization and cheerful inconsistency that you are sometimes willing to overlook when you’re in a cozy house, but is unavoidably amateur under big-time conditions. There are regular attempts at ritual (these using many wonderful masks designed by Schmidt himself) but they really don’t have much to do with the show and seem as if the authors merely decided that a theatre celebration would have to use ritual. Still, I’m glad they got “Celebration” out of their system and it is by no means a disaster – Martin Gottfried in Women’s Wear Daily

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