Composer Biographies

Michael Glenn Williams composes for a wide range of musical styles and purposes, from prize winning contemporary symphonic concert music, concert choir, chamber and solo piano works to avant-garde electronic music, Christian, Hebrew and popular songwriting, jazz, television and film. His jazz group “1 40 4 20” has released two publications: “Jazz Trespassers” and “Wet”, to critical acclaim. Michael G. Williams’ music and piano performance is featured on the recent films “Wonderland” and “The Limey” from Universal Pictures.

As a columnist, his articles have appeared in IEICE, Electronic Music Educator, Klavier and Computer Music Journal. Michael G. Williams is well known in the computer industry as an expert in operating system design, system hardware design and computer chip functional design. He serves full time as a Principal Architect for Nokia’s Office of the CTO. He was the author of the music, MIDI sequencing, typesetting and printing program SuperScore, and consulted on the design of the original music font for general use “Sonata” with Adobe Systems. His name appears in three IEEE international computer standards.

Michael Williams has served as a director on the board of the Thousand Oaks Philharmonic, national Treasurer for NACUSA, director of contemporary music at Ascension Lutheran Church in Thousand Oaks, and for the Rothstein conservative temple in Woodland Hills, CA. He has served as accompanist or organist for numerous churches, temples, colleges and master classes in Southern California. As an accomplished classical pianist, Michael Williams twice won the Northridge Chamber Music award, and has premiered works written for him by composers such as Jeffery Cotton and Jeff Rona. He was recently guest artist at the first national conference of NACUSA in Kansas City, 2003. He performs with the Chopin Project, a group of pianists performing scholarly and unusual concerts of Chopin.

Michael Williams has composed five musicals for children and youth; music for the television series “Chicago Hope”; scored scenes for movies such as “The Limey”, “King of the Hill”, “Younger and Younger”, “House of Yes” and “Wonderland”; two piano concertos, a trio for the Westlake Chamber Ensemble; a string quartet for the Escher Quartet; over sixty songs for use in Christian worship; over forty songs for his instrumental jazz group; a symphony and concert march for symphonic band; an orchestral tone poem; and numerous contemporary pieces for solo piano. An publication of his solo piano music was recorded by Roberto Prosseda for AIX Media Group. An publication of solo and duo piano music was recorded by Enrico Pompili and Gabrielle Baldocci for the Stradivarius Records label, to be released in 2008.

Mr. Williams taught music composition at UCLA extension. He studied composition and piano performance at California State University Northridge and at the Eastman School of Music, where he won the Howard Hanson Prize for orchestral composition. He lives in Ventura County, California.

Michael has 58 publications in the catalog.