Today we have some exciting news to share about one of our favorite composers, John Williams. As we briefly mentioned earlier in the week, John is now 80 years old.  He celebrated this occasion on August 18^th John Williams with some of his closest celebrity friends with a memorable concert at Tanglewood, an estate and music venue in Massachusetts. According to the press release we’ve been sent:

Tanglewood had the honor of presenting the only official celebration of John Williams’s 80th birthday attended by the composer himself, with a gala tribute concert on Saturday, August 18 at 8:30 p.m., featuring performances by stars of the music world, along with surprise stage appearances and video messages from luminaries of the world of arts and culture. Steven Spielberg and James Taylor made surprise stage appearances and President Barack Obama, The Honorable William Jefferson Clinton, George Lucas, Brian Williams, Seiji Ozawa, and Gustavo Dudamel were featured in video birthday greetings to Mr. Williams throughout the evening.

In what was a spectacular evening of some of Mr. Williams’s most popular works for film and the concert stage, the program featured the Boston Pops Orchestra, cellist Yo-Yo Ma; soprano Jessye Norman; violinist Gil Shaham; clarinetist Anthony McGill; pianist Gabriela Montero; and the U.S. Army Herald Trumpets, as well as conductors Keith Lockhart, Leonard Slatkin, and Shi-Yeon Sung. James Taylor, accompanied by BSO cellist Owen Young, performed “You’ve Got a Friend.” Maestro Williams (brief bio below), who holds the titles of Boston Pops Laureate Conductor and Tanglewood Artist in Residence, and the audience heard beloved themes from his film scores to E.T., Harry Potter, and Star Wars, Schindler’s List, Memoirs of a Geisha, as well as his Air and Simple Gifts, a work composed by John Williams for the inauguration ceremony for President Barack Obama.

Thanks to Tanglewood we have some photos and a video from the event that you can see below.

The publishers of J.K. Rowling’s new book, The Casual Vacancy, have announced a book tour that she will be participating in. Rowling is scheduled to appear on ABC’s Nightline, World News and Good Morning America, as well as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central. She will also do two print interviews, one USA TODAY.

Publishers have revealed that they are approaching the release of this book differently than in the past with the Potter books. Although those older readers who were with Harry from the beginning are said to be the main audience, the book has a much darker tone that than of Harry Potter.

Set in the little English town of Pagford, The Casual Vacancy (Little, Brown, $35) revolves around an election held after a member of the parish council unexpectedly dies. Despite the Miss Marple terrain, press materials describe the novel as “blackly comic … Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty facade is a town at war.”

“I expect the world to be ecstatic at the range of her imaginative reach,” predicts Rowling’s American publisher, Michael Pietsch. One of the few to have read the embargoed book, he calls Rowling “a genius, one of the great writers of all time.” Reading the 512-page novel, he says, “reminded me of Dickens because of the humanity, the humor, the social concerns, the intensely real characters.”

Part of the reason for this is because J.K. Rowling wants to separate this book from the Potter series,

Barnes & Noble vice president for marketing Patricia Bostelman says that Little, Brown’s approach is what the author wants. “Apparently much of their behavior is at J.K. Rowling’s wishes,” says Bostelman. Rowling “has very strong opinions on how she wants publishing of the book handled. … She’s trying not to live on the laurels of Harry Potter and very much wants to have this book stand alone, on its own merit, just as if she were just any other author who was landing on the scene.”

The book will be released on September 27th. They are even releasing an e-book version simultaneously for $19.99.

A new television sport for Tom Felton’s upcoming movie, The Apparition, has been released by the film’s Facebook page. They have also let us know that in the next few days interviews with the cast, including Tom will be posted, so stay tuned! The film will be released this coming Friday, August 24th. Will you see it?

According to Shelf Life, Entertainment Weekly’s book website, J.K. Rowling will be taking part in a live chat this Fall!  On October 16th, Rowling will be making a very rare rare public appearance in the US to discuss The Casual Vacancy. Ann Patchett, a fellow author, will be joining her for a conversation in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall in New York City.

Tickets, which will be available starting September 10th, include a copy of the book, releasing on September 27th:

• $43 if purchased online:
  link not available yet
• $44 if purchased via phone:
  CenterCharge: 212.721.6500
  TTY: 212.957.1709
  Open daily 10:00 am–9:00 pm
• $37 if purchased at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office:
  Broadway at 60th Street
  Monday–Saturday: 10:00 am–6:00 pm, Sunday: noon–6:00 pm

John Williams is set to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award for Classical Music at the 2012 Classic Brit Awards! Dickon Stainer, Co-chairman of the Classic Brit awards committee, told BBC: “John Williams has crafted some of the most memorable film scores for over half a century.”

Williams, who is now 80 years old, has won five Oscars, four Golden Globes, seven Baftas and twenty-one Grammy awards. He is also the second most nominated man at the Academy Awards behind Walt Disney, with 47 nominations over the course of his career. Some of his most famous scores include Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Home Alone, Jurassic Park and, of course, Harry Potter.

Nominations for the rest of the awards will be announced on September 6th.  The show will be hosted by Myleene Klass at London’s Royal Albert Hall and will air on ITV1  on 2 October.

In a new interview with The NY Times, Emma Watson talks about The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Guillermo del Toro’s Beauty and the Beast and more!  The interview also includes a new photoshoot with the actress.  In the interview Emma confirms that shooting for Beauty and the Beast will begin next summer,

I went to him [del Toro] and said Warner Brothers have given me the script for ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ but the only way I’d really want to do it is if you did it. And then miraculously he said, ‘Oh, funnily enough ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is my favorite fairy tale, I can’t let anyone else do this, I’ll start putting a team together.’ ”

She also discusses having to speak in an American accent for The Perks of Being a Wallflower, out September 21st.

“My grandma said — when I was really young and I’d sing along to the radio — why do you sing in an American accent? I guess it was because a lot of the music I was listening to had American vocalists. And that was something Steve said to me as well: try singing the lines in an American accent. That kind of opened me up. Then I worked with a dialogue coach and I just put in the time to really, really listen and just go over it and over it and over it until I could do it without thinking about it too hard. And I just knew it was really important.”

Speaking of why she waited so long to do films other than Potter she states:

“I think at first I didn’t because I was always either studying or filming, I didn’t have time to go off and do other films or other things to sort of show people that, Oh, she is not just Hermione, she is an actress and she can go and do these other parts and roles. . . . I didn’t, because I was so focused on, you know, on my GCSEs and on my AS and on my A-levels and then getting in to university and then whatever, I didn’t really have time to do any of that.”

The rest of the interview includes Emma talking about schoool (Brown and Oxford) as well as her parent’s and their involvement in her career and being recognized in public, read the full interview over at The NY Times!