Summon the Heroes is a one-movement orchestral composition written for the 1996 Summer Olympics by American composer John Williams for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC).
"[3] Musicologist Margaret Dilling compared the piece to Williams's previous Olympic works, noting their common elements including an opening fanfare, theme performed by solo or soli trumpet, and a penultimate "galloping bolero-type ostinato" leading to a "grand-slam finale.
[citation needed] The piece was played at the 1996 Summer Olympics on July 19 by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, in an abridged form lasting three-and-a-half minutes, and conducted by Williams.
[5][6] In reviewing Summon the Heroes on the 2002 album American Journey (featuring an eponymous composition and the 2002 Olympic theme Call of the Champions, among other Williams' pieces), film music critic James Southall highly praised the work, saying that it "...manages to offer in six minutes the kind of development and depth that simply isn't possible in the shorter tracks that have come before."
[3] Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times, however, called it "junk" and "no more than an exercise in chest-thumping and whooping", preferring Michael Torke's Javelin, which was commissioned for the 1996 Cultural Olympiad.