Composer and songwriter, Gareth Williams is a Reader in Music at Edinburgh College of Art. His practice adapts and transforms text and stories into sung staged works that seek to find new relationships, participants, collaborators and audiences for new opera, music theatre, and song. He creates award winning music for companies and organisations such as Scottish Opera, Tapestry Opera, National Theatre of Scotland, Red Note Ensemble, Hebrides Ensemble, Bridge Theatre, Ulster Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and Chamber Music Scotland.

 

Williams was inaugural Composer in Residence at Scottish Opera from 2011 to 2014, creating a series of operas and projects, including ‘Breath Cycle’, at the respiratory ward of Gartnavel Royal Hospital, where he wrote songs, ensemble pieces, and opera specifically for patients with Cystic Fibrosis, who weren’t allowed in the same room as one another. Breath Cycle was nominated for a Royal Philharmonic Award in 2014.  He continues this preoccupation of working with fragile voices, currently working with people suffering from Long Covid symptoms in Breath Cycle II, at Scottish Opera since 2021.

 

He has created three award-winning operas with NOISE Opera since 2012, each one bringing a new collaborator to the genre, from the patrons of Glasgow’s oldest bar, the Shetland fiddler, Chris Stout, and the Scottish indie band, Admiral Fallow.

 

The chamber opera, ’Rocking Horse Winner’, adapted from a short story by D.H. Lawrence by librettist Anna Chatterton, was premiered by Tapestry Opera in Toronto in May 2016. It was nominated for 9 Dora Mavor Moore Awards, winning 5, including Outstanding Musical Production.  The work was staged at Saratoga Opera in 2018, and described as ‘beautiful and disturbing, gripping and provocative.’ (Classical Voice America). A cast recording was released in 2020. In 2023, Rocking Horse Winner was staged by Opera Louisiane, Opera Maine, Manitoba Opera, and returned to Toronto for a re-mount by Tapestry Opera in November 2023.

 

From 2015 - 2018 Williams collaborated with writer Oliver Emanuel to create The 306 Trilogy.  306 Dawn (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Herald), 306 Day (⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Times) and 306 Dusk ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Herald, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Stage) were a collection of music theatre works over three years telling the story of the British soldiers shot for cowardice during WW1, produced by the National Theatre of Scotland in partnership with 14-18 Now. 'Lost Light - Music From the 306’, an album of music from the trilogy was recorded and released in 2020.

 

In July 2022, Scottish Opera premiered Rubble, a new chamber opera for large chorus and ensemble, created with Johnny McKnight, to celebrate 60 years of the company. In the same year, Williams performed with his own trio at Book Festivals and libraries across Scotland, partnering with Chamber Music Scotland, to bring a brand new collection of ‘Songs From The Last Page’ that showcase Scottish Literature, explore intertextuality through songwriting, and examine and uncover a simultaneity in notions of elegy and regeneration.

​

An album of 'Songs from the Last Page' was released in August 2023, to co-incide with a week-long residency at the Scottish Story Telling Centre in Edinburgh as part of the Made in Scotland Showcase at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, with tour dates at the Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, Dundee Rep Theatre, and the John Hewitt Literary festival in Ireland.

​

In August 2024, the musical theatre work "A History of Paper", written with Oliver Emanuel, premiered at the Traverse Theatre as part of the ‘Made in Scotland’ Showcase during Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The piece was immediately highly acclaimed, receiving nine 5 star reviews winning a Scotsman Fringe First 2024 and Musical Theatre Review's 'Best New Musical' award. It was also chosen as Runner Up for the Leading Light award for the best Scottish production at the Scottish Theatre Awards. The work was also performed at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, and at Dundee Rep Theatre in 2024.

 

Currently, Williams is working on a new chamber opera commissioned by Tapestry Opera in Toronto, with writer Anna Chatterton, based on a short story by Monique Proux, as well as a new volume of ‘Songs from the Last Page’.