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NewsFall 2005The Music Department welcomes Amy Williams to the faculty as assistant professor in composition/theory. This fall the department welcomes Amy Williams to the faculty as assistant professor in composition/theory. Williams brings with her an impressive list of accomplishments. She has been featured all over Europe and the United States as both a composer and performer with the Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo.
Her prizes include the Wayne Peterson Composition Prize, the Thayer Award for the Arts, and the ASCAP Award for Young Composers, as well as grants from leading foundations such as the American Music Center and Meet the Composer. Williams also brings extensive teaching experience, having served on the composition faculties of Bennington College and Northwestern University. When asked about her early impressions of Pittsburgh and the department, Williams is enthusiastic. “I’ve been very impressed with the cultural vitality of Pittsburgh. I’ve gone to several events at the Mattress Factory and in the cultural district and I have been delighted (and, I must admit, a bit surprised) by the hundreds of people attending. The Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble is also a vibrant and innovative group. The department has been wonderfully welcoming to me and I feel truly honored to be a part of it. I’m especially looking forward to intellectual and musical exchanges with my colleagues in other programs; this interaction seems to be at the heart of this department." Williams’ busy career hasn’t skipped a beat since her appointment to the faculty at Pitt. Her work, Cineshape 1, was performed by Due East at the Yellow Barn Music Festival in July (with repeat performances taking place in Chicago and DeKalb in October); Bent Frequency will also perform the work in Atlanta in October. Her Sextet will be featured at the Musikhøst Festival in Odense and Copenhagen, Denmark in October. Amy Dissanayake recorded her solo piano work, Astoria, for a CD to be released in the spring. The Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo (together with Helena Bugallo) will perform her four-hand piece Abstracted Art, in concerts this fall in Chicago, Columbus, Cleveland, and Ann Arbor. The Duo was one of the featured ensembles at the 2005 Ojai Festival in June. Their performance was dubbed “the highlight of this festival” by The Santa Barbara News Press. The Ventura County Star wrote that they “play with a matching sensibility and skill that enables them to produce a sound that magically seems to flow from a single pair of hands and a single artistic soul.” As a follow-up to their debut CD of the music of Conlon Nancarrow, released in 2004, the Duo will be recording an all-Stravinsky CD in December, also for the Wergo label. You can find out more about Amy Williams on the Web at www.bugallowilliams.com.
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Her works have been performed by renowned contemporary music soloists and ensembles, including The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble Aleph, Monarch Brass, CUBE, Empyrean Ensemble, California E.A.R. Unit, International Contemporary Ensemble, pianists Yvar Mikhashoff and Amy Dissanayake, bassist Robert Black, and a recent piano concerto for Ursula Oppens and the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra in Boston.