How many decades has the career spanned of the musician who was commissioned to write music for NBC's national news programs
John Williams John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932) is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. With a career spanning over six decades, he has composed some of the most popular and recognizable film scores in cinematic history, including "Jaws", the "Star Wars" series, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", "Superman", "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial", the "Indiana Jones" series, the first two "Home Alone" films, the first two "Jurassic Park" films, "Schindler's List", and the first three "Harry Potter" films. Williams has been associated with director Steven Spielberg since 1974, composing music for all but three of his feature films. Other notable works by Williams include theme music for the Olympic Games, "NBC Sunday Night Football", "The Mission" theme used by NBC News, the television series "Lost in Space" and "Land of the Giants", and the incidental music for the first season of "Gilligan's Island". Williams has also composed numerous classical concertos and other works for orchestral ensembles and solo instruments. From 1980 to 1993, he served as the Boston Pops' principal conductor, and is now the orchestra's laureate conductor.
The Longines Symphonette The Longines Symphonette was a pre-recorded classical music program broadcast nightly on many Mutual Broadcasting System stations from 1943 to 1949. It then moved to CBS where it was heard Sundays at 2pm from 1949 to 1957. The initial conductor was Macklin Marrow, followed for most of the run by Michel Piastro, one-time concert master of the New York Philharmonic.