The Librettist Alan Riach was born in Larnarkshire, Scotland and holds degrees from the Universities of Cambridge, where he studied English as an undergraduate, and Glasgow, where he completed his doctorate in the department of Scottish Literature. He worked in New Zealand f
The Dominion Post 12 July 2005 The newly commissioned piece by Hamilton composer Michael Williams, Behind the Parapet, proved an effective musical evocation of Plato’s notion of our world as flickering images from an “ideal” world from “Behind the Parapet”. It empl
New Zealand Herald Saturday 18 June 2005 The NZSO came to town with the nicest gift they could bring us – a New Zealand commission. Michael Williams’ Piercing the Vault coached thought provoking philosophies in an idiom that could be described as approachability without
Waikato Times 14 Sept 2008 Michael Williams Triple Concerto ‘Convergence’ proved a very approachable work. The cyclical nature gave the soloists an opportunity to shine; they did in all aspects of this oeuvre with virtuosity. Williams refined sense of orchestral colo
In 2008 I visited the town of Cassino and the Monastery on Montecassino in order to experience first hand this place that I was going to be writing about. Between John Davies (librettist) and I, we had done a fair bit of research and that story that has developed is in large