8 July - 8 August 2010
MICHAEL GLENN WILLIAMS (PIANO & COMPOSITION)
COMPOSER IN RESIDENCE OF LAKECOMOFESTIVAL 2010
The LakeComo festival in its fifth edition has decided to increase the contemporary repertoire guesting a composer for a month in lake Como region.
The composer selected this year is the US composer Michael Glenn Williams. Michael will be inspired by the landscape and the place sourrounding him. He will perform in festivals and other resort on the lake, but he will have plenty of time to study and compose to enrich the musical heritage locally and globally.
THE MUSICIANS
MICHAEL GLENN WILLIAMS (PIANO & COMPOSITIONS)
Michael Glenn Williams composer, pianist, record producer, concert producer and artist agent, composes for a wide range of musical styles and purposes, from prize winning contemporary classical symphonic concert music, concert choir, chamber and solo piano works to avant-garde electronic music, tonal and free atonal, Christian, Hebrew and popular songwriting, jazz and free jazz, television and film. His jazz group "1 40 4 20" has released two albums: "Jazz Trespassers" and "Wet", to critical acclaim. Michael G. Williams' music and piano performance are featured on film including "Wicker Park", "Wonderland" and "The Limey" from Universal Pictures.
As a columnist, his articles have appeared in Electronic Music Educator, Klavier, Computer Music Journal and IEICE. Michael G. Williams is well known in the computer industry as an expert in operating system design, system hardware design and computer chip functional design. He served full time as Principal Architect for Nokia's chief technology office. He was the author of the MIDI sequencing, typesetting and printing program SuperScore, and consulted on the design of the original music font for general use "Sonata" with Adobe Systems. His name appears in three IEEE international computer standards, and he served as officer in the IEEE 802.21 working group.
As a pianist, Michael Williams is the founder of The Chopin Project (http://www.thechopinproject.com/) performing unusual recitals of Chopin's music. He is also the founder of the Chopin 200 Festival, celebrating the 200th anniversary of Chopin's birth. In addition to performing Chopin and his own compositions, Michael is known as an improviser in jazz and in classical genres.
Michael has served as director of contemporary music at Ascension Lutheran Church in Thousand Oaks, and for the Rothstein conservative temple in Woodland Hills, CA. He has served as accompanist or organist for numerous churches, temples, colleges and master classes in Southern California. As an accomplished classical pianist, Michael Williams twice won the Northridge Chamber Music award, and has premiered piano works written for him by composers such as Jeffery Cotton and Jeff Rona. He performed and led composition master classes at the MTAC State Conference in 2006.
In the last few years, Michael Williams has composed Tarantella (Italian Holdiay) for piano and orchestra; Piano Concerto 1 (Princess Concerto) for piano, narrator and orchestra; five musicals for children and youth; music for the television series "Chicago Hope"; scored scenes for movies such as "Wicker Park", "The Limey", "King of the Hill", "Younger and Younger", "House of Yes" and "Wonderland"; trios for the Nordio-Meloni-Prosseda Trio and the Westlake Chamber Ensemble; other chamber music; over sixty songs for use in Christian worship; over forty songs for his instrumental jazz group; a symphony and concert march for symphonic band; an orchestral tone poem; and numerous contemporary pieces for solo and duo piano. An album of his classical solo piano music titled "Lyricism" was release in 2006 by Roberto Prosseda for AIX Media Group. Another recording of his solo piano music entitled "Digital Animation" was released in 2009 by Enrico Pompili and Gabriele Baldocci pianists, on the Stradivarius label.
Michael studied composition and piano performance at California State University Northridge and at the Eastman School of Music, where he won the Howard Hanson Prize for orchestral composition. He is an active member of NACUSA (National Association of Composers USA), SCI (Society of Composers), AMC (American Music Center and CMS (College Music Society). He taught music composition at UCLA extension for several years.