Roderick Williams


Roderick Gregory Coleman Williams OBE is a British baritone and composer.

Biography

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. 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, the president of Malvern Concert Club since July 2014 and the president of the Three Choirs Festival Society since December 2016. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to music. In 2019, he was announced as Patron for Birmingham Bach Choir.
Williams and his wife Miranda have a son and two daughters. His sister-in-law is the stage director Orpha Phelan.

Operatic repertoire