Michael Glenn Williams


Michael Glenn Williams is an American composer, pianist and technologist.

Biography

Williams' earliest years were spent in New York City, beginning trumpet studies and composing at 8 years old. At 12 he was programming DEC PDP 8 minicomputers. He attended CSU Northridge as a dual major in composition and piano performance where he studied with Aurelio de la Vega, Danial Kessner, Frank Campo, and Francoise Regnat. He pioneered composing for FM synthesis combined with music concrete and acoustic instruments. He did graduate studies at the Eastman School of Music as a composition major, where he taught undergraduate electronic music, and worked with Samuel Adler, Robert Morris, Warren Benson, pianist Rebecca Penneys, and briefly with Joseph Schwantner and David Burge.

Performance career

Williams is performing as pianist in The Chopin Project, with the jazz group 1 40 4 20, and as a studio pianist for film and television. As composer-in-residence at the Lake Como Festival 2010, he performed as recitalist for the International Piano Academy's Piano Master series. He premiered works written for him by Jeffery Cotton, Jeff Rona and other composers. He twice won the Northridge Chamber Music Award for performances of contemporary music. Williams also regularly releases performances on his Facebook page and YouTube channel "."

Works

Williams composes for solo piano, chamber ensembles, choir and solo voice. Works for orchestra include New West Overture, Rising Stars Overture, Oceanic Overture, American Prairie Sketches, Tarantella for piano and orchestra, composed for pianist Sean Chen; Princess Concerto for piano, narrator and orchestra; and The Gates of Hell a series of tone poems based on the Rodin sculptures. Williams catalogue for solo piano is extensive, with over twenty suites. Williams also composed for movies including King of the Hill, The Limey, Younger and Younger, The House of Yes, Wonderland and Wicker Park. He also composed cues and performed piano for the TV series Chicago Hope.

Notable recordings

As a technologist, Williams has served as the Vice Chair of the IEEE 802.21 working group, secretary for the IEEE 1275 Open Firmware working group, and member of the IEEE 1754 Open Microprocessor working group. He authored the program SuperScore, one of the first computer editing and printing programs for music, and co-developed the Sonata font, the first music font for professional computer typesetting of music. He authored articles for the IEICE, Music Technology, Electronic Music Educator, and Klavier. He was awarded the title of Leading Scientist while working at Nokia. He holds patents in a variety of areas including network security, clustering, authentication and secure search.