Southampton Film researcher meets John Williams
Postdoctoral researcher in Film Dr Emilio Audissino has presented John Williams with a copy of his new book about the popular film music composer; it is the first scholarly work on his career in English.
The composer congratulated Emilio on its publication at the event in Boston, where he also gave a concert at Symphony Hall. The book covers John Williams's compositions for movies including Jaws, Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark.*
While in the USA, financed by a World Universities Network (WUN) award, he also visited Madison, Wisconsin, to give two radio interviews on his research and presented a paper at the Music and the Moving Image conference, meeting many leading scholars in the field, before travelling on to Boston.
"John Williams is a gracious and unpretentious gentleman; he thanked me for the gift and congratulated me on the publication of the book," says Emilio.
The researcher combines the academic study of music with film and television production; his fiction short Yoshiwara Club, a horror extravaganza set in a disco, was selected for the Short Film Corner Catalogue of the Cannes Film Festival in 2008.
*John Williams's Film Music: 'Jaws', 'Star Wars', 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' and the Return of the Classical Hollywood Music Style (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014)