Roderick Williams | |
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| Born | Roderick Gregory Coleman Williams 1965 (age 60–61) London, England |
| Education | Christ Church Cathedral School; Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School Magdalen College, Oxford; Guildhall School of Music |
| Occupations | Baritone singer and composer |
Roderick Gregory Coleman Williams OBE (born 1965) is a British baritone and composer.
Roderick Williams was born in North London to a Welsh father and a Jamaican mother. He attended Christ Church Cathedral School in Oxford and Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, a public school in Hertfordshire. He was a choral scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford, and then became a music teacher and led the Tiffin Boys Choir. At the age of 28, he resumed music studies at the Guildhall School of Music in London. At Guildhall, he made his operatic debut as Tarquinius in Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia.
Williams first appeared at The Proms in 1996 as the Royal Herald in Verdi's Don Carlos. He was a soloist at the 2013 Proms production of Ralph Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony’, and again in 2014 Last Night of the Proms, which included performances of his own arrangements of two songs. His commercial recordings include albums for Naxos and for Signum. In 2006, Williams and the Sacconi Quartet made the premiere recording of Gerald Finzi's 1921-22 song cycle By Footpath and Stile.
Williams is the president of Junior Saint James Singers and has been the president of Malvern Concert Club since July 2014 and of the Three Choirs Festival Society since December 2016.
He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to music. In 2019 he was announced as Patron of Birmingham Bach Choir. In 2020 he was appointed President of the London concert series Thames Concerts. In 2022, he was appointed a Vice-President of The Bach Choir.
Williams and his wife, Miranda, have two daughters and a son. His sister-in-law is the stage director Orpha Phelan.
In 2022, Williams became a Patron of Opera Brava, "Britain's leading outdoor touring Opera Company." In 2023, he was announced as one of the composers who would each create a brand new piece for the Coronation of Charles III and Camilla.
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Williams was commissioned by the Financial Times in 2014 to compose a Christmas carol, "Christmas Bells", a setting of a poem by Longfellow. It was premiered by the Godwine Choir at St George the Martyr church in Southwark, London. His choral orchestral setting of Keats' To Autumn was commissioned by the Waynflete Singers in 2019 and was premiered in Winchester Cathedral on 16 October 2021.
