Hollywood Bowl – August 24, 2025
Believe it or not, this was my first time attending John Williams Night at the Bowl. There’s a reason for that: sooooo many kids and soooooo many light sabers. I know people who go every year. They love it. I try to avoid anything that appeals to kids and people who like to cosplay to the Bowl. Julie wanted to go. In fact I’m pretty sure we bought these tickets as part of our “choose your own package”. At any rate, I texted her when I arrived and told her every third person had a lightsaber. By the time she got off the bus, she was also questioning the sanity of going to John Williams night. At some point as we were looking around I told her there’s a reason we’ve never gone before and she seemed to think that I didn’t warn her or try to talk her out of it. I’m pretty sure I did.
I somehow got seats in row 6 of our section but not on the end. I’m not sure how that happened. The whole reason you get row 6 is so no one is sitting in front of you and it’s easy for people to get by you to get to their seats without you having to completely pack up your stuff and stand up. I can only guess the end seats were already sold when we bought our tickets. I was annoyed. I was annoyed by the irritating people around us (people!!! you STAND for the national anthem!!! And take off your hat!), the irritating people climbing over us to get to their seats, and the irritating cosplayers with their irritating light sabers. And then the show began. There was talking, but not more than usual (how sad is it that I’m just getting used to that?) but mostly people were listening to the music. It was shocking to see the audience relatively well-behaved. The first piece was “The Flight to Neverland” from Hook. It was pretty and sounded familiar, but Hook? There are so many movies to choose from and they chose Hook. From there we moved onto Suite from Far and Away, and “Sayuri’s Theme” from Memoirs of a Geisha. Again, very much John Williams sounding and lovely pieces, but…I guess they needed to build up to the more popular stuff. Next was “The Shark Cage Fugue/Out to Sea” from Jaws. Not the theme to Jaws, mind you, but music from when the Richard Dreyfuss character is putting together the shark cage. At least David Newman stopped to explain to us what a fugue is. He also explained to us that in the next piece, during movement 2 the mother in E.T. is reading Peter Pan to her daughter and the harp trills represent Tinkerbell being brought back to life. Pretty, yes. Familiar, yes. What I was expecting, not so much.
After intermission, we had the Superman March and then dove into the Indiana Jones suite. They had a screen up and didn’t even use it in the first half. It was becoming clear that all the real action was set to happen in the second half. We got some John Williams growing up and John Williams in the studio montages on screen and then for Indiana Jones we got a slew of movie clips. Still a little surprising that they chose a piece from the 3rd movie and one from the most recent movie before heading into “Raiders March” from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of he Lost Ark.
They showed the short film Dear Basketball, which was a collaboration between Kobe Bryant and John Williams. It was touching and sweet, and honestly less out of place than some of the stuff they chose for the first half. Then we got to what everyone was waiting for: Star Wars music. The light sabers were all turned on and swung about wildly as we made our way through a medley of Star Wars music that for some reason did not include Darth Vader’s March.
The show was good. I’m not unhappy that I went. But it wasn’t great. There are so many great scores to choose from (Jurassic Park?? Close Encounters?? Harry Potter??) that it was a bit of a letdown. There is of course a chance that if I had gone every year I would have heard all of those and they are trying to keep the show fresh for the people who never miss it. But how do you do a Star Wars medley and not include the Imperial March?