SO LONG AS it interests him, and can be played on the guitar, John Williams will give it a go. Australian-born Williams, who appears next Wednesday at the Cultural Centre in a duo recital with composer and multi-instrumentalist Richard Harvey, is best known as one of the world's foremost exponents of the classical guitar repertoire. But he's also performed movie and show tunes, jazz compositions and folk, not to mention being a founder member of classical-rock fusion band Sky.
His current project is possibly his most eclectic yet. It involves Harvey - whose Concerto Antico Williams recorded in 1995 and with whom he's been collaborating on and off since the late 1970s - playing more than 20 instruments in a programme of ancient and modern music from four continents.
Although Harvey is a longstanding member of the John Williams and Friends musical collective, this is the first time the two men have played together for an entire concert programme as a duo. Performances to date have been enthusiastically received.
It's all a long way from 1978, when Harvey, now a successful composer of film and television music, was best known as the leader of progressive rock band Gryphon. 'One of the first things we did was play a bit of background music for one of the Amnesty International fundraisers,' he says. 'We played the music for the Monty Python cheese shop sketch. Richard played the bouzouki and I played the guitar.'
That brief performance - captured in the film The Secret Policeman's Ball, which also features Williams playing Won't Get Fooled Again with Pete Townshend - ends with John Cleese shouting: 'Shut that bloody bouzouki up!' and a hurt-looking Harvey heading for the wings.
Harvey and Williams' World Tour - a reference to the range of music rather than the miles they're covering - has no bouzouki and a bit more gravitas, but it's clear that both men are enjoying the project enormously. 'We started doing it properly at the end of last year and it's taken off rather,' says Williams. 'We've worked together such a lot in different combinations we thought last year, with Richard being so good on so many different instruments - more than so good, he's amazing - it would be really fun to put a programme together.'