Teen serenades ‘Star Wars’ legend
Walnut Creek trumpeter seizes attention outside home of famed composer
The Walnut Creek musician who wrote the theme for “Solid Gold” stood outside John Williams’ house the other day, trying to get the famous composer’s attention by playing the “Star Wars” theme with a 13year-old kid on trumpet. It worked. No, you couldn’t make that up if Han Solo’s life depended on it. But the point is that Michael Miller — who has had a nice career writing television theme songs — took a chance that most of us wouldn’t, as did the young trumpet player he currently mentors, Bryce Hayashi, a Foothill Middle School student.
Miller was in Los Angeles a few weeks ago with his protege to take him to some performances of another talented trumpeter he has mentored, Josh Shpak. Thanks to a friend, Miller happened to know where
the world’s greatest film composer lives in Los Angeles, and decided to expand Bryce’s profile by quickly working out a two-horn arrangement of Williams’ “Star Wars” theme, then setting up on the sidewalk in front of Williams’ tony home.
The idea was to play until Williams came out. What happened can be seen on a video, taken by Miller’s friend, that’s gone viral.
“I started to listen and I thought, ‘Oh, they’ll never make it.’ And they did,” says Williams as he’s seen on the video, walking toward the two.
“Fantastic,” Williams added as he shook Bryce’s hand.
Williams, 84, the musical genius who won five Academy Awards for his work on “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Jaws,” Star Wars,” “E.T. the Extra Terrestrial” and “Schindler’s List,” “was very gracious,” said Miller, who was the musical director for TV music show “Solid Gold,” for which he composed the brain-sticky theme song. The graduate of Ygnacio Valley High School in Concord also ghostwrote music for “The Carol Burnett Show” and a number of other CBS programs, as well as composing the song that John Denver sang to open the 1984 Winter Olympics. He recently produced the debut CD of the rising pop/funk band, RIPE.
The video cuts off shortly after Williams greets the two, but Miller said Williams spoke with them for another five or 10 minutes.
“He was enthusiastic for Bryce and very complimen- tary,” Miller said. “Bryce has extraordinary range, and John would have recognized his skill playing those notes. He was very impressed.”
Bryce, who’s entering eighth grade and is headed for Northgate High School in Walnut Creek, which has a top-notch jazz music program, has narrowed down his career choices to professional musician, male model (no, really) and sports medicine. He knew who John Williams was, but hadn’t realized his stature until the video caught fire on YouTube.
“It never occurred to me he was such an impor- tant figure,” said Bryce, by phone from a camp at Stanford’s Jazz Workshop. ”He was a cool guy. We were just doing it for fun.”
The performance was a matter of “Why not?” he continued. “It wasn’t like someone was going to come out with their tomatoes and throw them at us.”
Miller, who divides his time among Los Angeles, the Bay Area and New Zealand, met Bryce in April at the Next Generation Jazz Festival in Monterey. As he did with Shpak, another Northgate grad who was recently seen on a PBS special with Josh Groban, Miller offered to mentor him.
Miller said making the video — which after only a few days has garnered more than 1.5 million views on YouTube — “took some guts,” for which he credited Bryce.
“Most kids would say, ‘I don’t want to do that, but Bryce said, ‘Yeah, OK,”’ Miller said. “The point was to just play this in front of John Williams’ house. The fact that he came out was just amazing.”