Prof Alan Williams
School of Arts, Media and Creative Technologies
Current positions
Professor of Collaborative Composition
Biography
Alan Williams is a composer and writer on contemporary music and culture, and Professor of Collaborative Composition at the University of Salford.. He studied at the Universities of Edinburgh and Manchester and at the Liszt Academy, Budapest. His music has been performed by world leading ensembles such as the BBC Philharmonic, the BBC Singers, the Philharmonia, MDR Radio Choir, and Psappha, and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, MDR (Germany), NEC (Brazil) and Bartók Rádió (Hungary). In 2016 he created a score for Val McDermid’s adaptation of The Kraken Wakens, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2016, and in 2017 he wrote the ‘world’s first Northern opera’ with Ian McMillan, with poet Ian McMillan. In 2023 he created Healing Tales, a collaborative composition with NHS workers in Bolton telling the story of their experience of the COVID pandemic, and this led him to develop the Listening Composer method of collaborative composition.
Areas of Research
Composition
Collaborative composition methods
Participatory arts
Arts-based research
Contemporary culture
Hungarian music and culture
Qualifications
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PhD
1995 - 2000