The premier of Letters from the Front took place on the 22nd May at the Michael Fowler Center in Wellington New Zealand with the NZSO and a simultaneous concert at the Sydney Opera House with the SSO. What a night! I was absolutely delighted with the performance. I attended
I am in the process of composing a new symphony for the New Zealand Symphony orchestra and have decided to start a blog. The piece is for the 100 year anniversary of the battle of Gallipoli in WWI where many New Zealand soldiers fought and died. It will also touch on other W
There are people in this life who have the uncanny ability to sap creative energy and and inflict negativity and cynicism on me. I call them creativity sappers who are never satisfied with anything, are self-centered, narcissistic, mean spirited and generally somewhat parano
Finally finished this piece yesterday. Now it goes on a trip to London to record the violin part with Jenny Bae, to Italy to record the soprano and guitar parts with Laura De Santis and Alessanrdo Minci and back to NZ for mixing and mastering. A real global effort!
I will be setting the following poem “The Future is not war” by Renzo Nanni for a piece I have been asked to write for the 70th anniversary of the battle for Montecassino in 2014. A beautiful poem and I am very much looking forward to working with soprano Laura d
I have recently been commissioned by New Zealand Symphony Orchestra to write a symphony for the Gallipoli Commemorations for 2015. This is a huge responsibility and will be approaching it with the utmost care. It will be for full orchestra with soprano and narrator and title
Project Developer and inaugural composer Michael Williams has written a composition of around 1 minute in duration. This has been forwarded toa composer of his choice who will add a further minute, once completed sends on to another composer of their choice etc. Each compo
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
