Roderick Williams, Martin Ford, Vasari Singers, Jeremy Backhouse
Biography Roderick Williams, Martin Ford, Vasari Singers, Jeremy Backhouse
Roderick Williams
was born in 1965 in London to a Welsh father and a Jamaican mother. He studied at London’s Guildhall School of Music and – while still completing opera classes there – made his debut as Tarquinius in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia. He soon became known in particular for his interpretations of Mozart’s major baritone roles, performing at the English National Opera, Opera North, Scottish Opera, and the Royal Opera House in London. Another focus of his artistic work is contemporary music, with credits in stage works by David Sawer, Sally Beamish, Robert Saxton, and Alexander Knaifel. In this area he recently appeared, in March 2015, in Michel van der Aa’s Sunken Garden at the Opéra de Lyon. Williams is a sought-after concert singer who has worked with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the DSO Berlin, the Russian National Orchestra, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and the Bach Collegium Japan. He has sung the role of Christus in Peter Sellars’s staging of Bach’s St. John Passion in performances with Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic in Berlin and Baden-Baden. In September 2014 Williams was the star guest for the Last Night of the Proms, at which he sang Strauss’s Taillefer and Rule, Britannia at the end. Williams also presented some of his own song arrangements there, for he himself is a successful composer whose works have been heard in London at Wigmore Hall, the Barbican, and the Purcell Room, as well as on radio broadcasts. As a lieder singer he has performed at the Oxford Lieder Festival, the London Song Festival, and the Musikverein in Vienna, and he has recorded an anthology of English song settings. Starting in 2016 he will take on artistic directorship of the Leeds Lieder series.
Vasari Singers
was founded in 1980 and is regarded as one of the leading chamber choirs in Britain. Under the direction of its founder-conductor Jeremy Backhouse, Vasari Singers performs a wide range of repertoire from Renaissance to contemporary.
The choir sings regularly at major concert venues and other locations in London and elsewhere, including abroad, having enjoyed tours to Spain, the Baltic states and Italy in recent years. Cathedral residencies are an important part of the choir’s year and the choir is heard frequently on Classic FM and BBC Radio 3.
Two crucial foundation stones of the choir’s history have been the commissioning of new choral works and making recordings: Vasari’s extensive discography includes a large collection of premiere recordings, many of which are of works commissioned by Vasari Singers, as well as two collections of Christmas music. Most of the choir’s recordings feature 20th and 21st century composers and many have received high acclaim, achieving chart successes and similar recommendations. One such recent review by Choir and Organ described Vasari Singers as ‘outstanding, gifted and deeply musical’.
During the moratorium on live choral singing in 2019 and 2020, Vasari turned its attention to online activities, successfully engaging with a worldwide audience through virtual performances and choral workshops. Notable amongst these were a film on french composer Marcel Dupré, praised as ‘one of the best pandemic-driven virtual performances’ and the online launch concert for its latest recording ‘Heaven full of Stars’. Released on the Naxos label, this attractive album features celestial music by contemporary composers. It received high critical acclaim, with one reviewer writing: ‘the whole programme is mesmerising and the performances are exquisite—perfect intonation, blend, expression, musicality, and sheer beauty of choral sound.’
