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BioGRaPHieS & CoMPoSiTioNS |
MILTON WILLIAMS
has received critical acclaim, internationally, for his performances. A
remarkable range of abilities have made him one of a limited number of
musicians to effectively interpret repertoire ranging from opera and
oratorio to jazz, blues, and "new music." Williams has conducted,
performed or produced some thirty-four operas, operettas and musicals, over
sixty oratorios, masses and cantatas. He has also been a much sought after
interpreter of contemporary work by 20th-century composers.
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As a conductor, Milton Williams has served as music director and conductor
of both choral and orchestral ensembles. The list includes the Solisti
Singers and the Solisti Theater Arts Orchestra; the Banff Festival of Fine
Arts Professional Orchestra; the Banff Festival and School of Fine Arts
Choral Division (Head); the University of California, Berkeley, Faculty
Men's Chorus, and the Student Division of Vocal Music (Director), also of
the University of California at Berkeley. He conducted the West Coast
premiere of Leonard Bernstein's Mass, in Berkeley, and the premiere
of his own work, Espying at the Banff Festival of Fine Arts in
Canada. In 1999, he was Chorus Master for the Festival's production of
Leonard Bernstein's Mass. He returns this season as Chorus Master,
as well as a performer in the role of "Grandpa Moss" for Aaron
Copland's The Tender Land.
Williams has also made an international name for himself as a vocalist. He
has performed in Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe; Canada; Bermuda and
throughout the United States. He has narrated over a dozen works, including
Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait, and Joseph Schwantner's New
Morning for the World at Cabrillo Music Festival in 1997. His vocal
studies were with Donald Stenberg, Julius Huehn, Arthur Kraft and Ethel
Hardy Smith. Williams' conducting instructors were Denis de Coteau, Harold
Farberman, Gerhard Samuel and Robin Laufer. He studied composition with
Loren Rush, Robert Erickson and Sol Joseph. Williams' list of coaches
include Darius Milhaud, Adolf Baller (lieder), William L. Dawson (African
American music), and Adelaide Richie in oratorio (mother of Lionel Richie).
He has performed with a wide range of talented musicians in a wide range of
genres from George Walker, Della Reese, Ron Carter, George Duke, Dennis
Russell Davies, Lou Harrison and many others.
Milton Williams' list of compositions include Transfigured Blues, a
Masque for Total Theater; Strange Horse, for narrator, small
orchestra, soprano and women's chorus; Espying, a Theater Oratorio;
Hitchhiker, a film score (distributed by Time Life Films);
Prelude, for full orchestra; Fanfare for a New Century, for
six brass; and Orchestral Suite from Transfigured Blues. His primary
compositions and arrangements have been vocal music related.
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