Emil de Cou currently serves as Music Director of the Pacific Northwest Ballet. Previously he was associate conductor with the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO), where he led national tours, and performances at the Kennedy Center and at the US Capitol. He has served as Principal Conductor for the NSO’s performance series at the Wolf Trap Festival for more than a dozen years. His innovative concerts at Wolf Trap have included the first screenings of The Wizard of Oz with the score performed with live orchestra, the first ever live-tweeted program notes (for Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony), and a live real-time podcast for a concert entitled Fantastic Planet. In 2008 he conducted the first performance of Rodgers & Hammerstein at the Movies.

As musical consultant for NASA, Mr. de Cou conducted several successful collaborations, including Human Spaceflight: The Kennedy Legacy, at the Kennedy Center. In 2006 he led the NSO in a presentation of Holst’s The Planets with narration by Leonard Nimoy and images from NASA. For his ongoing work with NASA, Mr. de Cou was awarded the agency’s Exceptional Public Achievement Medal in 2012.

Mr. de Cou was acting music director for San Francisco Ballet and conductor of the American Ballet Theatre for eight seasons. His performance of the ballet Othello (with music Elliot Goldenthal) was aired on PBS’s Great Performances and recorded for the Varèse Sarabande label. His other recordings include Debussy Rediscovered, which includes previously unrecorded works by Debussy, for the Arabesque label.

Mr. de Cou has appeared as guest conductor with many leading orchestras, including those of Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Houston, Milwaukee, Minnesota, Saint Louis, and the Boston Pops. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 1992 and served as principal pops conductor in 1995 and 1996.

Emil de Cou was born in Los Angeles and studied with Daniel Lewis at the University of Southern California. He was the subject of a documentary on National Public Radio and participated in Leonard Bernstein's master class at the Hollywood Bowl. He makes his home in San Francisco and Seattle with his husband, conductor Leif Bjaland.

(July 2018)

In a career spanning more than six decades, John Williams has become one of America’s most accomplished and successful composers for film and for the concert stage. He has served as music director and laureate conductor of one of the country’s treasured musical institutions, the Boston Pops, and he maintains thriving artistic relationships with many of the world’s great orchestras, including the Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Mr. Williams has received a variety of awards, including the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors, the Olympic Order, and numerous Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, Emmy Awards and Golden Globe Awards. He remains one of our nation’s most distinguished and contributive musical voices.

Mr. Williams has composed the music and served as music director for more than 100 films. His nearly 50-year artistic partnership with director Steven Spielberg has resulted in many of Hollywood’s most acclaimed and successful films, including Schindler’s List, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Close Encounters of the Third Kind,the Indiana Jones films, Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Munich, Hook, Catch Me If You Can, Minority Report, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Empire of the Sun, The Adventures of Tintin, War Horse, The BFG, and Lincoln. Mr. Williams composed the scores for all nine Star Wars films, the first three Harry Potter films, Superman, JFK, Born on the Fourth of July, Memoirs of a Geisha, Far and Away, The Accidental Tourist, Home Alone, Nixon, The Patriot, Angela’s Ashes, Seven Years in Tibet, The Witches of Eastwick, Rosewood, Sleepers, Sabrina, Presumed Innocent, The Cowboys, The Reivers,and Goodbye, Mr. Chips,among many others. He has worked with many legendary directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, William Wyler, and Robert Altman. In 1971, he adapted the score for the film version of Fiddler on the Roof, for which he composed original violin cadenzas for Isaac Stern. He has appeared on recordings as pianist and conductor with Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Jessye Norman, and others. Mr. Williams has received five Academy Awards and 52 Oscar nominations, making him the Academy’s most-nominated living person and the second-most nominated person in the history of the Oscars. His most recent nomination was for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. He also has received seven British Academy Awards (BAFTA), 25 Grammys, four Golden Globes, five Emmys, and numerous gold and platinum records.

Born and raised in New York, Mr. Williams moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1948, where he studied composition with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. After service in the Air Force, he returned to New York to attend the Juilliard School, where he studied piano with Madame Rosina Lhevinne. While in New York, he also worked as a jazz pianist in nightclubs. He returned to Los Angeles and began his career in the film industry, working with a number of accomplished composers including Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman, and Franz Waxman. He went on to write music for more than 200 television films for the groundbreaking early anthology series Alcoa Theatre, Kraft Television Theatre, Chrysler Theatre, and Playhouse 90. His more recent contributions to television music include the theme for NBC Nightly News; the theme for what has become network television’s longest-running series, NBC’s Meet the Press; and a new theme for the PBS arts showcase Great Performances.

In addition to his activity in film and television, Mr. Williams has composed numerous works for the concert stage, among them two symphonies and concertos for flute, violin, clarinet, viola, oboe, and tuba. His cello concerto was commissioned by the Boston Symphony and premiered by Yo-Yo Ma at Tanglewood in 1994. Mr. Williams also has been commissioned by several of the world’s leading orchestras, including a bassoon concerto for the New York Philharmonic entitled The Five Sacred Trees, a trumpet concerto for the Cleveland Orchestra, and a horn concerto for the Chicago Symphony. Seven for Luck, a seven-piece song cycle for soprano and orchestra based on the texts of former US Poet Laureate Rita Dove, was premiered by the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood in 1998. At the opening concert of their 2009–10 season, James Levine led the Boston Symphony in the premiere Mr. Williams’s On Willows and Birches, a new concerto for harp and orchestra.

In January 1980, Mr. Williams was named 19th music director of the Boston Pops, succeeding the legendary Arthur Fiedler. He currently holds the title of Boston Pops laureate conductor, which he assumed following his retirement in December 1993, after 14 highly successful seasons. He also holds the title of artist-in-residence at Tanglewood.

One of America’s best known and most distinctive artistic voices, Mr. Williams has composed music for many important cultural and commemorative events. Liberty Fanfare was composed for the rededication of the Statue of Liberty in 1986. American Journey, written to celebrate the new millennium and to accompany the retrospective film The Unfinished Journey by Spielberg, was premiered at the America’s Millennium Concert in Washington, DC, on New Year’s Eve 1999. His orchestral work Soundings was performed at the celebratory opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. In the world of sport, he has contributed musical themes for the 1984, 1988, and 1996 Summer Olympic Games, the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, and the 1987 International Summer Games of the Special Olympics. In 2006 Mr. Williams composed the theme for NBC’s presentation of Sunday Night Football.

Mr. Williams holds honorary degrees from 22 American universities, including Harvard, Juilliard, Boston College, Northeastern University, Tufts University, Boston University, New England Conservatory, UMass Boston, Eastman School of Music, Oberlin Conservatory, and University of Southern California. He is a recipient of the 2009 National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists by the US Government. In 2020, Mr. Williams received Spain’s Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts, as well as the Gold Medal from the Royal Philharmonic Society in the UK. In 2016, he received the 44th Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute—the first composer in history to receive this honor. In 2003, he received the Olympic Order, the IOC’s highest honor, for his contributions to the Olympic movement. He served as the grand marshal of the 2004 Rose Parade in Pasadena and was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in December of that year. In 2018, he received the Trustees Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Mr. Williams was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009, and in January of that same year he composed and arranged Air and Simple Gifts especially for the first inaugural ceremony of President Obama. 

Feb 2023