BMI Honors Legendary Film Composer John Williams at the 34th Annual BMI Film, TV, & Visual Media Awards

Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI®), the global leader in music rights management, held its 34th annual Film, TV & Visual Media Awards last night at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. The private ceremony was hosted by Vice President Creative - Film, TV & Visual Media, Doreen Ringer-Ross and BMI President and CEO Mike O'Neill, who honored prolific composer John Williams with the John Williams Award for his incomparable status as one of the greatest film and television composers of our time.

Earlier in the evening, award-winning composers Laura Karpman, Miriam Cutler and Lolita Ritmanis received the BMI Champion Award for their commitment to supporting fellow women media composers through The Alliance of Women Film Composers, which they founded in 2014. Composer Rick Baitz was also presented with BMI's Classic Contribution Award in appreciation for creating and leading BMI's successful "Composing for the Screen" workshop for the past ten years. Throughout the evening, additional notable composers were honored for music featured in the past year's top-grossing films, top-rated primetime network television series and highest-ranking cable and streamed media programs.

Additional BMI Film, TV & Visual Media Award winners included celebrated composers James Newton Howard, Alexandre Desplat, Brian Tyler, Danny Elfman, Alan Silvestri, Ludwig Göransson, Tyler Bates, Christopher Lennertz and Fil Eisler, among others.

Williams was previously honored with The Kirk Award in 1999, which later became the BMI Icon Award, for composing some of the most popular and recognizable scores in cinematic history, such as the Star Wars series, Jaws, Schindler's List, the Indiana Jones series, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS of the Third Kind, and the list goes on. Since then, the multiple award-winning composer has created an equally impressive catalogue of scores for acclaimed films such as the first three HARRY Potter films, Memoirs of a Geisha and Lincoln, among others, while continuing to score the Star Wars series, including the forthcoming Star Wars Episode 9. In his unparalleled and illustrious career that spans more than six decades, John Williams has scored more than 100 films and garnered 5 Academy Awards, 51 Oscar nominations, 5 Emmy Awards, 4 Golden Globe Awards, 24 GRAMMYs, as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 2016. Other notable honors include the National Medal of Arts (2009), KENNEDY Center Honor (December 2004) and Olympic Order (2003).

ABOUT BMI:

Celebrating over 77 years of service to songwriters, composers, music publishers and businesses, Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI®) is a global leader in music rights management, serving as an advocate for the value of music. BMI represents the public performance rights in nearly 13 million musical works created and owned by more than 800,000 songwriters, composers, and music publishers. The Company negotiates music license agreements and distributes the fees it generates as royalties to its affiliated writers and publishers when their songs are performed in public. In 1939, BMI created a groundbreaking open-door policy becoming the only performing rights organization to welcome and represent the creators of blues, jazz, country, and American roots music. Today, the musical compositions in BMI's repertoire, from chart toppers to perennial favorites, span all genres of music and are consistently among the most-performed hits of the year. For additional information and the latest BMI news, visit bmi.com, follow us on Twitter @BMI or stay connected through Broadcast Music, Inc.'s Facebook page. Sign up for BMI's The Weekly™ and receive our e-newsletter every Monday to stay up to date on all things music.

Photo Credit: Lester Cohen/Getty Images for BMI

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