Jan Williams | |
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| Born | 17 July 1939 |
| Alma mater | Manhattan School of Music |
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Jan Williams (born Jan Gardner Williams, July 17, 1939) is a percussionist, arts administrator, teacher, conductor, and composer who has championed avant-garde and progressive music in the United States. He is recognized as an important proponent of percussion performance and its literature. [1]
Williams was born in Utica, New York, where he first studied drums in elementary school under George Claesgens. After experience playing snare drum in marching and concert bands, he began to study timpani while in high school. At Clarkson University (Potsdam, New York), then called Clarkson College, he elected an Electrical Engineering major because his teachers discouraged music as a career. Within a year, he was out of school, and the following fall he entered the Eastman School of Music to study with William Street, who advised Williams to study the keyboard percussion instruments seriously. Sometime during that year at Eastman, Williams read a magazine article that praised the work of Paul Price, a percussion teacher at the Manhattan School of Music who was performing new music for percussion ensemble. In the Fall of 1959, Williams moved to New York City to study with Price at the Manhattan School of Music. He spent five years at the Manhattan School, earning a bachelor's degree (1963) and master's degree (1964) in music performance. [2] From 1962 to 1964, he was a member of the American Symphony Orchestra under conductor Leopold Stokowski. In 1964, Williams was selected as one of the first Creative Associates at the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts at the University at Buffalo, which was founded by Lukas Foss and Music Department Chair, Allen Sapp. He remained at UB, where he created the Percussion Ensemble, with fellow Creative Associate percussionist, John Bergamo, continued an active performance career specializing in contemporary music and served as chair of the Music Department from 1981 to 1984. He retired in 1996 as Professor Emeritus. Williams also served as artistic director of the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts from 1974 to 1979 and as its resident conductor from 1976 to 1980. He co-directed, with Yvar Mikhashoff, the North American New Music Festival from 1983 to 1992. [3]
Williams has been featured as solo percussionist with orchestras in Paris, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Copenhagen, Detroit, New York City, Buffalo and Los Angeles and appears internationally as percussionist, conductor, and instructor. Noted composers Lukas Foss, John Cage, Elliott Carter, Morton Feldman, Iannis Xenakis, Frederic Rzewski, Nils Vigeland, Joel Chadabe, Luis De Pablo, Gustavo Matamoros, and Orlando Garcia have written works for him. His playing and conducting have been captured on numerous commercial and archival recordings. [3] [4]
Williams was a member of the Percussion Jury for Germany's prestigious ARD International Music Competition in 1997, 2001 and 2014.
In 2014 the Burchfield Penney Art Center celebrated Williams' 75th birthday with a special tribute concert. Williams conducted colleagues and former students in a performance of Edgard Varèse's iconic percussion composition, Ionisation. [5]
Jan Williams was interviewed in 2014 as part of the Burchfield Penney Art Center's Living Legacy Project. [6]
Williams' wife Diane was a violist with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra for 28 years. He has two daughters, Elizabeth Williams, a Nurse Practitioner and Amy Williams, a composer and pianist. (Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo) [7]
Williams has appeared professionally as a percussionist and conductor in the United States and internationally.
Williams has recorded for Columbia, Vox/Turnabout, Desto, Lovely Music, Spectrum, Wergo, DGG, Orion, Hat-Art, OO, New World, Deep Listening, EMF Media, Frozen Reeds and Mode Records. [9]
The university at Buffalo Music Library has curated and archived 219 of his annotated scores (link below). [4]
Morton Feldman was an American composer. A major figure in 20th-century classical music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminacy in music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown. Feldman's works are characterized by notational innovations that he developed to create his characteristic sound: rhythms that seem to be free and floating, pitch shadings that seem softly unfocused, a generally quiet and slowly evolving music, and recurring asymmetric patterns. His later works, after 1977, also explore extremes of duration.
Carol Plantamura is an American soprano specializing in 17th and 20th century music.
Lukas Foss was a German-American composer, pianist, and conductor.
A percussion ensemble is a musical ensemble consisting of only percussion instruments. Although the term can be used to describe any such group, it commonly refers to groups of classically trained percussionists performing primarily classical music. In America, percussion ensembles are most commonly found at conservatories, though some professional groups, such as Nexus and So Percussion exist. Drumlines and groups who regularly meet for drum circles are two other forms of the percussion ensemble.
Earle Brown was an American composer who established his own formal and notational systems. Brown was the creator of "open form," a style of musical construction that has influenced many composers since—notably the downtown New York scene of the 1980s and generations of younger composers.
John Bergamo was an American percussionist and composer known for his film soundtrack contributions and his work with numerous other notable performers. From 1970 until his death, he was the coordinator of the percussion department at the California Institute of the Arts.
The Group for Contemporary Music is an American chamber ensemble dedicated to the performance of contemporary classical music. It was founded in New York City in 1962 by Joel Krosnick, Harvey Sollberger and Charles Wuorinen and gave its first concert on October 22, 1962 in Columbia University's MacMillin Theatre. Krosnik left the ensemble in 1963. It was the first contemporary music ensemble based at a university and run by composers.
Yvar Emilian Mikhashoff was an American virtuoso pianist and composer. He is best known for his performance of contemporary classical music.
Paul Zukofsky was an American violinist and conductor known for his work in the field of contemporary classical music.
Rocco Di Pietro is composer, pianist, author, teacher, and habilitationist whose work crosses multiple disciplinary boundaries. "His work has a literary and visual component linking him with the romantic tradition." He is based in Columbus, Ohio, United States.
Nils Vigeland is an American composer and pianist.
Petr Kotik is a composer, conductor and flutist based in New York City. In Prague, he founded and directed Musica Viva Pragensis (1961–64) and the QUAX Ensemble (1966–69). He moved to the United States in 1969 at the invitation of Lukas Foss and Lejaren Hiller to join the Center for Creative and Performing Arts at the University at Buffalo. He has lived in New York City since 1983.
David Felder is an American composer and academic who was a SUNY Distinguished Professor at the University at Buffalo until his retirement in 2022. He was also the director of both the June in Buffalo Festival and the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music.
Scott Wollschleger is an American composer based in New York City.
Amy Williams is an American composer and pianist. She was born in Buffalo, New York, into a musical family, with her mother being a violist with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, and her father being a percussionist and professor emeritus at the university at Buffalo.
Imaginary Landscape No. 4 is a composition for 24 performers on 12 radios and conductor by American composer John Cage and the fourth in the series of Imaginary Landscapes. It is the first installment not to include any percussion instrument at all and Cage's first composition to be based fully on chance operations. It is also the second march in the set of Imaginary Landscapes, after Imaginary Landscape No. 2 . It was composed in 1951.
Imaginary Landscape No. 5 is a composition by American composer John Cage and the fifth and final installment in the series of Imaginary Landscapes. It was composed in 1952.
Five Pianos is a composition for five pianists composed in 1972 by American composer Morton Feldman. The piece is scored for five pianos and one celesta performed by the fourth pianist; the performers are also required to hum specific notes throughout the composition. It was first performed in Berlin on July 16, 1972, as part of the Berliner Musiktage festival, with the composer as one of the humming pianists.
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