Some of the most familiar music in American life didn’t come from concert halls or marching bands – it came from movie theaters. For this America 250 program, the United States Air Force Band of the Golden West – the only active duty Air Force band west of the Rockies, based at Travis Air Force Base in California – performs scores by Korngold, Bernstein, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and John Williams that have found their way into the national imagination.
The program opens with Korngold’s suite from The Adventures of Robin Hood, a score he wrote after fleeing Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938 – music he called an “opera without singing” that helped establish the symphonic style Hollywood would use for decades. John Williams’s With Malice Toward None, the main theme from Spielberg’s 2012 film Lincoln, follows as a trumpet solo carrying echoes of bugle calls and Taps. Selections from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music and Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story lead into the Armed Forces Salute, before the hour closes with Williams’s Star Wars trilogy – music that, nearly fifty years later, still sounds like summer.
Featured in this episode:
Williams – Fanfare Opener 1986
Smith – Star-Spangled Banner
Korngold – Suite from The Adventures of Robin Hood
- I. Old England
- II. March
- III. Love Scene
- IV. The Fight, Victory, and Epilogue
Williams – With Malice Toward None from Lincoln – featuring A1C Daniel Santos
Rodgers – Excerpts from The Sound of Music – featuring SSgt Alycia Cancel
Bernstein – Excerpts from Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
Various – Armed Forces Medley
Williams – Excerpts from Star Wars Trilogy
