This week, all who love film and music are celebrating the 90th birthday of John Williams, one of our finest-ever American composers. Even the shortest list of films for which Williams wrote the score dazzles the mind: Jaws, E.T., the Star Wars series, Schindler’s List, Home Alone, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Superman, the Harry Potter adventures. It’s hard to stop listing the titles, once you start.

Little could Williams have imagined, when he started out, that a global audience today would cheer, shout, weep, laugh, or cower at the vivid themes he created for these movies. Nor could he have imagined that arrangements of his film scores would blossom on concert stages around the world, especially this year.

Williams would be the first to explain that he stood on the shoulders of giants, most of them German, Austrian, Russian, and Slavic composers who fled persecution and revolutions in their homelands and landed in Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s. Again, it’s hard to stop listing their names, since they make up a galaxy of greatness: Erich Korngold, Miklós Rózsa, Max Steiner, Dmitri Tiomkin, Erich Zeisl, Franz Waxman, and many others. These composers, in their turn, had been taught by two generations of orchestral masters whose genius is epitomized in the lush color of symphonic poems by Franz Liszt and Richard Strauss, as well as in the endlessly beautiful melodies by composers like Johannes Brahms. And those composers, to take it back farther, had cut their teeth on the classical traditions developed by powerhouses like Ludwig van Beethoven. In short, had none of these artists cultivated the power of the symphony orchestra to narrate a story, we would have some very quiet, boring films.

So, raise a toast to Mr. Williams! And to compliment that toast, you might enjoy this interview with one my favorite conductors and persons in the world, Maestro Jerry Junkin, Principal Director of the Dallas Winds, among many (so many!) other responsibilities. Junkin is a musician’s musician: someone whose mastery over the broad and microscopic secrets of conducting leads his players to reach exceptional heights. He also has a deeply congenial nature that makes him a beloved figure everywhere he appears. I have learned more than I could describe watching this man over the years as he interacts with composers and players. And yes, he’s a huge fan of Star Wars, which will be apparent the moment you click on the interview.

The Dallas Winds concert called Epic John Williams will take place at the gorgeous Meyerson Symphony Center on the evening of February 15, so if you’re anywhere near the DFW metroplex, head that way. And may the Force . . . okay, you know what I mean.