John McLaughlin Williams | |
---|---|
Born | 1957 (age 66–67) North Carolina, U.S. |
Genres | Classical |
Occupation(s) | Conductor, performer |
Instrument | Violin |
John McLaughlin Williams (born 1957) is a Grammy award-winning American orchestral conductor and violinist. [1]
Williams, who is of African American heritage, was born in Greensboro, North Carolina. [2] He attended the Boston University School of Music, the New England Conservatory and is a graduate of The Cleveland Institute of Music. His violin studies were with Dorothy DeLay, conducting with Carl Topilow and composition with Donald Erb and Margaret Brouwer.
He has appeared as a guest conductor with the Novaya Russiya, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, Classic FM Symphony Orchestra (Sofia), the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Sinfonietta, and many other ensembles. He has recorded several CDs for the Naxos Records label, all in their American Classics series, where he has shown a remarkable ability to uncover lost gems by American composers of the first half of the 20th century (such as Henry Hadley and John Alden Carpenter), and bring them vividly to life with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine and the National Radio Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. The resurgence of interest in western American composer George Frederick McKay (1899-1970) can be attributed to William's pioneering Naxos recordings of McKay's music. He was awarded a Grammy in 2007 for his recording of Olivier Messiaen's Oiseaux exotiques , in which he conducted the Cleveland Chamber Symphony with pianist Angelin Chang, who also received a Grammy. Williams has received a total of four Grammy nominations. Williams has also served as assistant conductor of the Britt Festival in Oregon. As a violinist, he has appeared as a soloist around the United States and was an active freelancer in the Boston area, where he was assistant concertmaster of the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra and played as a substitute with the Boston Symphony. Williams was also a member of the Houston Symphony, and was concertmaster of the Virginia Symphony.
As a conductor:
As a violinist:
Itzhak Perlman is an Israeli-American violinist. He has performed worldwide and throughout the United States, in venues that have included a state dinner for Elizabeth II at the White House in 2007, and at the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama. He has conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Westchester Philharmonic. In 2015, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Perlman has won 16 Grammy Awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and four Emmy Awards.
The 23rd Annual Grammy Awards were held on February 25, 1981, at Radio City Music Hall in New York City and were broadcast live on American television. They recognized accomplishments by musicians from the year 1980.
Joan Tower is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by The New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time", her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world. After gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, Sequoia (1981), a tone poem which structurally depicts a giant tree from trunk to needles, she has gone on to compose a variety of instrumental works including Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is something of a response to Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, the Island Prelude, five string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, including her widely performed Petroushskates.
Hilary Hahn is an American violinist. A three-time Grammy Award winner, she has played as a soloist with orchestras and conductors, and as a recitalist. Several composers have written works for her, including concerti by Edgar Meyer and Jennifer Higdon, partitas by Antón García Abril, two serenades for violin and orchestra by Einojuhani Rautavaara, and a violin and piano sonata by Lera Auerbach.
Gil Shaham is an American violinist. His accolades include a Grammy Award in 1999, and he has performed as a soloist with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Russian National Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and the Orchestre de Paris.
Nicolas Oreste Flagello was an American composer and conductor of classical music. He was one of the last American composers to develop a distinctive mode of expression based wholly on the principles and techniques of late romanticism.
Ilya Kaler is a Russian-born violinist. Born and educated in Moscow, Kaler is the only person to have won Gold Medals at all three of the International Tchaikovsky Competition ; the Sibelius ; and the Paganini.
Kenneth Daniel Fuchs is a Grammy Award-winning American composer. He currently serves as Professor of Music Composition at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut.
The Albany Symphony Orchestra is a professional symphony orchestra based in Albany, New York.
James Zuill Bailey, better known as Zuill Bailey is an American Grammy Award-winning cello soloist, chamber musician, and artistic director. A graduate of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University and the Juilliard School, he has appeared in recital and with major orchestras internationally. He is a professor of cello and Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Texas at El Paso. Bailey’s extensive recording catalogue are released on TELARC, Avie, Steinway and Sons, Octave, Delos, Albany, Sono Luminus, Naxos, Azica, Concord, EuroArts, ASV, Oxingale and Zenph Studios.
Philippe Quint is an American classical violinist.
George Frederick McKay was a prolific modern American composer.
Stephen Paulus was an American Grammy Award winning composer, best known for his operas and choral music. His style is essentially tonal, and melodic and romantic by nature.
The Cleveland Chamber Symphony (CCS) is an American chamber orchestra based in Cleveland, Ohio. It is dedicated to the performance of contemporary classical music, and has presented over 200 performance premieres. They work in partnership with Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music.
Nikolai Petrovich Rakov, was a Soviet violinist, composer, conductor, and academic at the Moscow Conservatory where he had studied. He composed mostly instrumental works, for orchestra, chamber music and piano music, especially pedagogic works. In 1946, he received the Stalin Prize for his first violin concerto, which became known internationally.
Emil Tabakov is a Bulgarian conductor, composer and double-bass player.
Anne Akiko Meyers is an American violinist. She has been called “the Wonder Woman of commissioning” by The Strad.
David Chan is an American violinist, conductor, and a concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He is one of the most sought-after violinists of his generation. He is a prizewinner at the International Tchaikovsky Competition, the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, among many others. As a conductor, Chan is praised for his deep understanding of the music and interpretive depth.
Jonathan Leshnoff is an American classical music composer and pedagogue.
Oiseaux exotiques is a piece for piano and small orchestra by Olivier Messiaen. It was written between 5 October 1953 and 3 January 1956 and was commissioned by Pierre Boulez. It is dedicated to the pianist Yvonne Loriod, who later became the composer's wife.