Music Makers: with Roderick Williams

This week we welcome baritone and composer Roderick Williams, whose expressive storytelling, stylistic versatility, and thoughtful musicianship have made him one of the most distinctive voices in opera, oratorio, and song.

1. Aria you hum round the house / sing in the shower

Okay - it’s a bit weird… but I often sing “La donna e mobile” in the shower (possibly a bit lower than written) to my own words “I am a baritone: I should have stayed at home…” and so on.

2. First aria you remember learning

One of my first singing teachers taught me “Thus saith the Lord” and “For he is like a refiner’s fire” from Handel’s Messiah. I sang them at my choral scholarship auditions. I didn’t realise till some time later that the aria is normally sung by an alto.

3. Aria you rely on professionally

It’s likely I’ve sung the Messiah arias more than any other. Calculating conservatively, I’d say I’ve sung 4 a year for the last 35 years but it could easily be more than that. And as a baritone rather than a bass, I actively look forward to “The Trumpet Shall Sound”. The other bass arias in Messiah can be a bit forbidding but this one is full of joy and hope.

4. Last piece of music you deliberately chose to listen to

Mahler’s First Symphony. Don’t laugh, but I’m due to conduct it soon, for a chamber ensemble. I’m trying to immerse myself in as many different performances as possible.

5. Aria you feel most emotionally connected to

This took me a while to unpack, because the operatic characters I have played are experiencing situations I have never (and hopefully will never) experience myself. To see the world through their eyes is cathartic for me but it is not my story. The closest I can suggest is Billy Budd’s aria “Look through the port” because of his relentless positivity in the face of dire circumstances. But I am not Billy: that is not my life and I am not that person.

6. Aria you wish you could sing / would love to learn next

When your voice eventually settles you come to terms with the fact that there are arias you will never sing. I will never sing Puccini’s greatest tenor arias - “Che gelida la manina” for example. I suspect my tenor friends would say I’m well rid! But to be able to nail that… what a thrill!!

Explore more of Roderick Williams’ work https://www.grovesartists.com/artist/roderick-williams/