Award-winning journalist. Writes regularly for Variety. Author of "Music for Prime Time," "The Music of James Bond." Hosts music podcasts for Dolby Institute.

Los Angeles
Joined July 2013
Honored to provide the essay for the latest JW compilation from Decca/DG:
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Somehow I hadn’t realized the great Jon Burlingame @jonburlingame was going to be interviewing Michael Giacchino. It was perfect! #D23Expo
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'Disclosure Day': John Williams Recorded Two Hours of Music Over a Six Month Period for his 30th Collaboration with Steven Spielberg (Exclusive) variety.com/2026/artisans/ne…
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The Cosmic Treasure Chest: 10 Million Galaxies in a Single FrameThis is the first major image released by the largest digital camera ever built for astronomy — the 3.2-gigapixel LSST Camera on the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.And it is absolutely staggering.Every single speck of light you see in this vast field is not a star. It is an entire galaxy — each one home to hundreds of billions of stars, planets, and possibly entire civilizations.In this one breathtaking snapshot, astronomers have captured roughly 10 million galaxies. That’s only about 0.05% of the total number this revolutionary observatory is expected to image over its 10-year survey.Captured in the direction of the Virgo Cluster, this image transforms what looks like empty space into a glittering tapestry of distant universes stretching back billions of years. The few brighter foreground stars belong to our own Milky Way — everything else is far beyond our galaxy.This is more than just a pretty picture. It is a preview of a new era in astronomy — where we will map the changing universe in unprecedented detail, hunt for mysterious dark matter and dark energy, discover thousands of new asteroids, and witness cosmic events as they unfold in real time.Welcome to the future of discovery. Image Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory
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Trump never has money for healthcare or VA staff or anything to actually make Americans’ lives better — but somehow found $1.8 billion to reward his allies with your tax dollars. That's corruption, plain and simple.
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James Webb Just Found a Giant Cosmic Highway of 20 Galaxies Stretching 13 Million Light-Years Across the Infant Universe! In one of its deepest infrared stares, the James Webb Space Telescope has uncovered something extraordinary: a massive, perfectly aligned chain of roughly 20 galaxies spanning nearly 13 million light-years — a colossal structure that existed when the universe was less than 1 billion years old.This isn’t just a random grouping. Scientists believe they’re looking at a cosmic filament — a thread-like superhighway where gravity, guided by invisible dark matter scaffolding, pulled these young galaxies into a long, connected chain. Individual galaxies in this structure are separated by hundreds of thousands of light-years, yet they all move together as part of the same enormous cosmic web.Webb’s powerful infrared vision pierced through the haze that once hid these ancient systems from Hubble, revealing how the very first large structures in the universe took shape. Instead of being scattered randomly, early galaxies preferred to form along these massive, invisible threads — dark matter acting like cosmic blueprint lines directing where stars and galaxies would be born.The light we’re seeing today left those galaxies over 13 billion years ago and has been racing toward us ever since. What you’re witnessing is a living fossil of the early cosmos, when the universe was still weaving the grand architecture we see today.A breathtaking reminder that the universe wasn’t born chaotic — it was organizing itself into vast, beautiful patterns from the very beginning. How mind-blowing is it that we can now see the cosmic “skeleton” that built everything?
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Jon Burlingame retweeted
James Webb Just Found a Giant Cosmic Highway of 20 Galaxies Stretching 13 Million Light-Years Across the Infant Universe! In one of its deepest infrared stares, the James Webb Space Telescope has uncovered something extraordinary: a massive, perfectly aligned chain of roughly 20 galaxies spanning nearly 13 million light-years — a colossal structure that existed when the universe was less than 1 billion years old.This isn’t just a random grouping. Scientists believe they’re looking at a cosmic filament — a thread-like superhighway where gravity, guided by invisible dark matter scaffolding, pulled these young galaxies into a long, connected chain. Individual galaxies in this structure are separated by hundreds of thousands of light-years, yet they all move together as part of the same enormous cosmic web.Webb’s powerful infrared vision pierced through the haze that once hid these ancient systems from Hubble, revealing how the very first large structures in the universe took shape. Instead of being scattered randomly, early galaxies preferred to form along these massive, invisible threads — dark matter acting like cosmic blueprint lines directing where stars and galaxies would be born.The light we’re seeing today left those galaxies over 13 billion years ago and has been racing toward us ever since. What you’re witnessing is a living fossil of the early cosmos, when the universe was still weaving the grand architecture we see today.A breathtaking reminder that the universe wasn’t born chaotic — it was organizing itself into vast, beautiful patterns from the very beginning. How mind-blowing is it that we can now see the cosmic “skeleton” that built everything?
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"Maurice Jarre always found the right signature for every film he scored." — Jon Burlingame. Nominated for multiple Academy Awards, he won three, for Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and A Passage to India. Maurice Jarre September 13, 1924 – March 28, 2009
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Long after @realDonaldTrump is gone, this and future generations will be paying a terrible price for his war on science and discovery. That, and not his name on buildings or ballrooms or currency, will be a big part of his legacy, and the cost of it in terms of lives and safety and lost discovery will be profound. nytimes.com/2026/03/25/clima…
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See #ProjectHailMary this weekend? Curious about that wonderful score? Check out my #Dolby podcast with composer @DANIELPEMBERTON: youtube.com/watch?v=UEnGBMtt…
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Amazing to be this close to a Frazetta original (from last night's Propstore auction preview in L.A.):
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Most fun reading of the month. Great interviews with such top composers as Silvestri, Horner, Elfman, Giacchino, Kamen, Shore and Zimmer.
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Congrats Golden from KPop Demon Hunters. As we see music is a character in storytelling. Take a listen to my conversation with @jonburlingame. Discover how theme songs shape our cultural memory, the evolution of TV music, and the future role of AI in scoring. #podcast #tv #music #theme #sitcom #iconic #history #drama #oscars #oscars2026 youtu.be/tBZKlogzeLY
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The introductions of TV shows feature some of the most memorable tunes ever written, in order to catch your attention and introduce a show's story and characters. David Pogue talks with composers Charles Fox ("Wonder Woman," "Laverne & Shirley") and Theodore Shapiro ("Severance"), and film music scholar @jonburlingame, about what makes a successful TV theme song – and how the dreaded "Skip Intro" button should be abolished. cbsn.ws/4aqU3q8
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"Recent events have brought Trump’s governing style into sharper focus," Jonathan Rauch argues. "'Fascist' best describes it, and reluctance to use the term has now become perverse." theatln.tc/8zCLlHtJ
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