John Williams is an American treasure (one might even say a global treasure). His music for films and television has graced our lives for more than 60 years, and many of his themes are now iconic musical touchstones for generations of viewers and listeners.

Los Angeles residents are especially lucky to have seen Williams conduct live on many occasions since the late 1970s, usually at the Hollywood Bowl. Who hasn’t experienced thousands of “lightsabers” cutting through the darkness while the maestro conducted excerpts from Star Wars on its legendary stage? Appropriately, on November 9 of last year, the Bowl stage was dedicated to the composer.

As Los Angeles Philharmonic President and CEO Kim Noltemy said on that occasion: “His concerts at the Bowl have defined what it means to experience film music live. This dedication honors not only his artistic brilliance but also the way he has helped shape the Bowl into the most recognizable stage for symphonic film music.”

While Williams, at 94, is no longer conducting in public, his presence continues to be felt, and his music played, in this historic space. This weekend’s concerts feature music from four of his five Academy Award–winning scores and range across 37 years of his long and prolific career of composing music for movies.

The composer’s most enduring professional relationship in films has been with director Steven Spielberg, and some of their films remain among the best-loved in cinema history. Their second collaboration was Jaws (1975), an adaptation of Peter Benchley’s bestseller about a great white shark prowling the waters off Massachusetts. The Barrel Chase is one of its most exciting sequences, as Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss pursue the predator to music that suggests the adventure to come and the intensity of the mission.

In 1978, Williams earned a pair of Oscar nominations for two very different science-fiction films: George Lucas’ Star Wars and Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Lucas sought “a classical score...something very theatrical and operatic,” the composer later recalled.

Williams’ richly orchestrated music elevated the space opera to unexpected heights, sold millions of albums and won the Oscar. Tonight’s concert includes Williams’ Throne Room and Finale, which the composer felt offered “a kind of ‘land of hope and glory’ feeling, almost like coronation music,” followed by the original Star Wars theme.

Spielberg’s Close Encounters—which Williams composed immediately after finishing Star Wars—demanded an entirely different approach. It was the intriguing story of an Indiana lineman (Dreyfuss) who becomes obsessed with UFOs and, along with a neighbor (Melinda Dillon), travels to Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, where they witness the arrival of extraterrestrials. This inspired one of Williams’ most musically diverse and impressive scores, from his creation of a five-note musical signal for the visitors to his use of modern tone clusters and one of his most majestic themes.

In 1978, Williams composed the score for Superman, based on the long-running saga of the last survivor of the doomed planet Krypton, his mild-mannered alter-ego Clark Kent, his reporter colleague Lois Lane, and the villainous Lex Luthor. The composer’s Superman March is appropriately soaring, with a romantic midsection for Superman and Lois.

Spielberg and Lucas joined forces to create the character of Indiana Jones for Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), one of the greatest action-adventure films of all time and the winner of five Academy Awards. Williams’ theme was heroic but also a bit tongue-in-cheek, reflecting something of Harrison Ford’s attitude and style in playing this character, part archeologist and part adventurer.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) is one of Spielberg’s most accomplished films in its uncanny ability to connect with audiences’ hearts despite the fact that the title character is an odd-looking little creature from another world. The Flying Theme and Finale are drawn from the last act of the film: the chase by Elliott (Henry Thomas) and his friends, who become airborne on their bicycles, and the emotionally wrenching farewell scene between Elliott and E.T.

Williams’ Olympic Fanfare and Theme was commissioned for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and has been heard as signature music for televised coverage of Olympic Games ever since. As Williams wrote at the time: “With every presentation of the Games, we experience that complete dedication and unshakable will to persevere that typifies the goal of each competitor. The human spirit soars, and we strive for the best within us.”

Nearly a decade later, the composer scored another sci-fi thriller for Spielberg: Jurassic Park (1993), author Michael Crichton’s fanciful notion of an island theme park where dinosaurs have been re-created using ancient DNA (and where things go awry). Sam Neill and Laura Dern played the astonished scientists. Williams created celebratory music for the park and music of awe and beauty for the gentle creatures they first see on the island.

Later that same year, he was tasked with another film for the same director, one that would win him a fifth Academy Award: music for Spielberg’s World War II drama Schindler’s List. Few motion-picture scores written before or since have had to tread so lightly and carefully. Williams accomplished the task at hand: music that met the necessary dramatic needs while also memorializing the victims of the Holocaust with reverence and compassion.

As the 21st century dawned, the composer tackled his most magic-filled assignment: music for movies based on J.K. Rowling’s hugely successful series of Harry Potter books for young people. The delicate, bell-like sound of the celesta has long been enshrined as the sound of magic, especially as featured in Hedwig’s Theme, music for Harry’s snowy owl. It was introduced in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) and is heard throughout the eight-film series. Harry’s Wondrous World, for Harry and his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, also debuted in the first Potter film.

Few of his admirers would dispute the notion that Williams has no peer in finding just the right musical colors for every film he tackles. The dignity and empathy of With Malice Toward None, from Lincoln (2012), is rooted in 19th-century American music while also suggesting something of the character of the 16th president (played in Spielberg’s film by Daniel Day-Lewis). It’s just one of more than 100 genuinely great scores penned over the years by this American master.

—Jon Burlingame