John Williams Conducts for Our Anniversary

Tonight Brian and I had a once-in-a-lifetime experience in seeing the best concert of our lives: John Williams, our absolute FAVORITE composer and partial reason why we fell in love, conducted the 210th Anniversary concert of the Marine Band in Washington DC tonight!!! And I don't think it was a coincidence that this "Anniversary" concert was one month to the day after OUR 10th anniversary. This was our true present to each other, and nothing could have topped it!!!!

Brian and I have wanted to see John Williams conduct since before we were married. Some of our first conversations were about the music of John Williams, who we both love. Brian and I spent hours on the bench in Furman Hall right outside McEachern Auditorium (sp?) talking about all the different movie soundtracks that we owned, and why we owned them: Star Wars, Superman, Jurassic Park, Jaws, etc. They were all written and conducted by John Williams. And it was our conversation about Jurassic Park that was particularly significant. Brian spoke of a particular musical theme, at which point I said, "Oh yeah, I think that one is in 'Dennis Steals the Embryos.'" And I remember the face with which Brian looked at me, . . . he couldn't believe that a girl would know about a song in Jurassic Park called "Dennis Steals the Embryos." Ha! Little did I know that was when he fell in love with me. : )

Anyway, we had done research from even before we were married in order to try and see John Williams conduct. He would usually only conduct one or two concerts a year, . . . and they were always too far away for us to attend. Since we moved here, we continued doing the same research. And then suddenly, we saw that John Williams was going to conduct at this special free anniversary concert of the Marine Band. Well, we would go online daily to see how to get tickets, but for a long time it simply said that the concert would be free, but you still needed to have tickets. So we waited. Suddenly, one day they had an address and anyone who wanted tickets (only TWO tickets, mind you) had to write to a snail mail address. Snail mail!!! Anyway, we set it out, and a few of our friends did as well. Jenny Rose was planning to give us her two tickets so we could take the girls. Well, um, all of our other friends were rejected! Brian and I were the only two to get tickets!!! (And there were only 2000 seats in the theater.) Anyway, we had the coveted tickets, . . . but only two. And the only sadness of the evening was the fact that Leia would have LOVED this concert. She is so much like Brian and I in this vein. Anyway, we had spent the week preparing the girls for a big night of babysitting with MollyLucille (with us returning at 3 AM), and now it was time to be off! We drove about 4 1/2 hours and talked so much that we forgot to listen to music! It was like when we were first dating again! And it was a much-needed break that we truly deserved. So wonderful to rekindle our relationship before we even GOT there! But it wasn't long before we took a mini-driving tour of DC and then straight to the Kennedy center getting in the big "general admission" line. When we got in, we were SURE that the seats in front were reserved, . . . but they WEREN'T, . . . so we got to sit in the EIGHTH ROW!!! I had a perfect view of John Williams himself (in that we were seated at stage right) and I could even see/read what was on his little plasma screen in front of him, . . . and even some of the words on his big book on the podium! The concert itself was AMAZING! I cried through most of it, . . . just flooded with such emotion of being there and hearing the best music I have ever known. They played The National Anthem, as well as the themes from Superman, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Reivers, 1941, Olympic Liberty Fanfare, Jaws, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, The Sugarland Express, and then a special tribute to George Lucas and Stephen Speilberg. And the biggest treat was that he actually spent time showing us how he scored a movie by showing us an Indiana Jones scene without the music and describing the themes he wanted to include, . . . and then conducting the orchestra along with that same track to add the music! He did the same with the clips from Harry Potter and Jaws. IT WAS AWESOME! And I got such a thrill out of being able to see HIS screen instead of looking at the huge one for the people at the back. ; ) But I made sure to keep my eye on HIM, more than the movie. I can see the movie anytime. We own all of them. Then he did lots of encores at the end where he conducted the song from the Yale motorcycle chase scene from Indiana Jones IV called "Motorcycle Mutt" and conducted a special tribute to the armed forces and (ta-da) conducted "The Imperial March". . . which is the "bad-guy-Darth-Vader song" from the Star Wars saga! Even the tribute to the armed forces was magical, . . . little did we know we had TWO 90-year-old marines sitting behind us, . . . so John Williams was sure to look our way!!! Our impressions of the concert were many, but the thing that absolutely floored us about our favorite composer was that John Williams was so very ANIMATED while he conducted, . . . and was a little bit less so when he had to concentrate on the movie screen. We feel now that we have an insider's view of this process of scoring a movie. How very blessed we are to have had this experience! Happy Anniversary, Lovie!!!