+44 (0)161 295 6234
a.e.williams@salford.ac.uk

 

Alan Edward Williams was born in Stockport and studied music at Edinburgh University, before pursuing composition as research at Manchester University and at the Liszt Academy, Budapest.

His compositions have received numerous radio broadcasts including performances by the BBC Philharmonic orchestra, and the BBC Singers. His recent violin duos Scenes from Ordinary Days were performed in Adelaide in May 2007, Queensland in October 2007, and in Calgary, Canada in January 2008. His choral work Divers Winged Creatures was a prizewinning piece in the MDR Radio Choir International Composition competition, and was premiered in Leipzig and subsequently broadcast in April 2008.

In November 2009 his Leverhulme and Arts Council funded large scale piece Wonder: a Scientific Oratorio, commissioned by the BBC Philharmonic, was premiered by them alongside Salford Choral Society and the BBC Singers. This was a collaboration with the Jodrell Bank centre for Astrophysics, and was commissioned as part of the UK’s contribution to the International Year of Astronomy. 2010 saw the premiere of Bog Bodies, a trio for flute, clarinet and piano by GNU in Rio de Janeiro. This piece will be broadcast in their performance by Brazilian national radio in 2011. He is developing a partnership between Salford University and the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) and is working on a joint music theatre project with Dr Marcos Vieira Lucas from UNIRIO for performance in 2012.

He also maintains a research interest in contemporary Hungarian music and has published academic articles in both English and Hungarian on Kurtág, Bartók, Vidovszky, Jeney, Sáry and the New Music Studio of Budapest. As well as supervising several PhD candidates in composition, he also supervises doctorate dissertations on contemporary music.