Choral conductor biography of william
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He is the author of two devotional books on music ministry, Hearts & Hands & Voices and Wonder, Love & Praise, published by Amber Waves Music.
His accomplishments have been recognized in his home states through proclamations by two Georgia Governors, Joe Frank Harris and Sonny Purdue, by Kansas Governor Jeff Colyer, by United States Congressman Phil Gingrey, by proclamations from the cities of Kansas City, Missouri and Roeland Park, Kansa, by the Johnson County (Kansa) Commission, and by a 2015 proclamation by the State of Georgia House of Representatives.
Many former SME students enjoy successful careers as performers and composers and as teachers at major music institutions worldwide.
In 1979 Appling founded the William Appling Singers & Orchestra (WASO), a professional ensemble performing chamber works of all periods and styles. WASO released a number of critically acclaimed recordings including “Wake Ev’ry Breath,” a CD on New World Records of music by William Billings, “Stresses in the Peaceable Kingdom,” the choral music of Richard Wilson, “Shall We Gather,” a recording of American hymns and spirituals, and “The Revenge of Hamish,” choral music by William McClelland, all on Albany Records. In 1996, WASO was the only professional musical organization in the United States to present concerts celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Billings, America’s first great composer.
William Appling Singers & Orchestra premiered the works of many contemporary American composers, including those by Hale Smith, Richard Hundley, Donald Erb, Richard Wilson, William McClelland, and Rich Smith.
He is an Associate of the RAM, a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, a Trustee of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society, a Samling Artist, a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians, the Chairman of Kensington and Chelsea Music Society and a regular conductor and vocal coach at the Dartington and Oxenfoord International Summer Schools.
You will find William Appling’s Wikipedia page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Appling
Click here to watch “Remembering Bill,” a video about the life of William Appling
A multiple-prize winning and critically acclaimed choral, orchestral and opera conductor and song accompanist, William Vann is particularly renowned for his revival performances and recordings of vocal and choral music by British composers.
His revivals of Hubert Parry’s Judith and Prometheus Unbound have been heralded by the press and audiences alike.
From 2012-2017 he served as director of The Cathedral Chorale, the early service choir for the Grace & Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kansas City. In the last few years he has conducted J.S. Bach's Matthäus-PassionBWV 244 and Mass in B minorBWV 232, and the Sacred Service of Ernest Bloch, at the time of the performances the only Kansas City-based conductor to lead the works in over a quarter-century.
William O.
Baker created the Atlanta-based William Baker Festival Singers, originally called Gwinnett Festival Singers, in 1985, and established the William Baker Choral Foundation in 1990. He founded the DeKalb Choral Guild in 1978 at the age of 19. He was appointed Music Director of the St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Lee's Summit, Missouri, in September 2020.
A graduate of Western Reserve University, BA and MA, he received numerous honors during his lifetime including First Prize in Piano in the National Association of Negro Musicians and the first Kulas Foundation Fellowship Award for Choral Conducting given by the Cleveland Orchestra.
During his years as educator in the Cleveland area, Appling was Choral Director for Glenville High School, and under his leadership the choir became well-known throughout Ohio and beyond, accepting invitations to sing at the Hollywood Bowl, New York World’s Fair and at educators’ meetings in Ohio and Indianapolis.
A composers’ forum, where works by Hale Smith and Anthony Davis were performed, was held at Vassar College in 1996 with both composers in attendance.
William Appling also enjoyed an active career as a pianist, appearing in solo recital at Town Hall, New York City, concerto performances with the Cleveland Orchestra under the batons of Robert Shaw and Louis Lane, at the Aspen Festival under Darius Milhaud, and in duo recital with tenor Seth McCoy.
The music camp/festival involved members of the Cleveland Orchestra and included visiting artists and master classes with Robert Shaw, Andre Watts, Yoel Levi, Janos Starker, Lynn Harrell and Lorin Maazel. While there he founded and directed Summer Music Experience, an international six-week program offering intensive music training and performance experience to gifted students of high school age.
He subsequently read law and took up a choral scholarship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he was taught the piano by Peter Uppard, and studied piano accompaniment at the Royal Academy of Music with Malcolm Martineau and Colin Stone.
William has collaborated across the world with a vast array of singers and instrumentalists, among them the Academy of Ancient Music, Britten Sinfonia, London Mozart Players and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Allen CBE, Mary Bevan, Sophie Bevan, Gwilym Bowen, Katie Bray, David Butt Philip, Allan Clayton, Dame Sarah Connolly, Neal Davies, Julia Doyle, Sarah Fox, James Gilchrist, Thomas Gould, Johnny Herford, Gareth John, Guy Johnston, Jennifer Johnston, Jack Liebeck, Njabulo Madlala, Pumeza Matshikiza, Aoife Miskelly, Ann Murray DBE, Ashley Riches, Matthew Rose, Kathryn Rudge, Carolyn Sampson, Brindley Sherratt, Julia Sitkovetsky, Nicky Spence, Toby Spence, Andrew Staples, Henry Waddington, Kitty Whately, Roderick Williams and the Sacconi and Navarra String Quartets.
Major appointments have included the historic Grace United Methodist Church in Midtown Atlanta and The Village Church in suburban Kansas City, the nation’s second largest Presbyterian congregation.
William Appling Singers & Orchestra was officially dissolved as a non-profit corporation in 2023, but the William Appling website, Youtube, Facebook, and Instagram pages will continue to be active.
He was most recently working on a project of recording the complete works of Scott Joplin. In 1965 the Cleveland Board of Education presented the Glenville High School Choral Club in a sold-out concert at Severance Hall. Appling also served as the Choral Director of the Case Men’s Glee Club, the West Shore Chorale, the Cleveland Philharmonic Chorus, and Director of Choral Activities at Vassar College.
Appling was head of the music department at Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio, for twenty-five years.
In 2012 he was honored for his contributions to the cultural life of his hometown by the Pro-Mozart Society of Atlanta. In 1997, sponsored by the American Embassy in Islamabad, he performed a benefit piano recital at The National Library of Pakistan which raised a significant amount of money for the Rawalpindi Leprosy Hospital.
Dr. He will conduct a set of opera scenes at the Royal College of Music in February 2026.
Born in Bedford, he was a Chorister at King’s College, Cambridge and a Music Scholar at Bedford School.
Mozart: Symphony No. 41, L.v. Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 and Symphony No. 9. Recent performances have included appearances at Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall, the Royal Opera House and The Temple Church, at the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Oxford Lieder and Machynlleth Festivals, the Northern Ireland Festival of Voice (broadcast on Radio 3) and abroad in Austria, France, Germany (on live ZDF television), Ireland, Italy, Nigeria, Portugal, South Africa (National Arts Festival) and Sweden.
He has recorded over thirty discs for Albion, Champs Hill, Chandos, Delphian, Etcetera, Navona and SOMM, including a ground-breaking four-disc set of Vaughan Williams folk song settings on Albion with Mary Bevan, Nicky Spence, Roderick Williams and Jack Liebeck and, as a conductor, a world premiere series of recordings of Hubert Parry’s works for chorus and orchestra on Chandos Recording.
His many prizes for piano accompaniment include the Wigmore Song Competition Jean Meikle Prize for a Duo (with Johnny Herford), the Gerald Moore award, the Royal Overseas League Accompanists’ Award, a Geoffrey Parsons Memorial Trust award, the Concordia-Serena Nevill Prize, the Association of English Singers and Speakers Accompanist Prize, the Great Elm Awards Accompanist Prize, the Sir Henry Richardson Scholarship and the Hodgson Fellowship in piano accompaniment at the RAM.
In addition to his performances of standard song repertoire, he has also either commissioned or given the first performances of new songs and song cycles by Christian Alexander, Joseph Atkins, David Power, Martin Eastwood, Ian Venables, David Nield, Graham Ross (the latter two at Wigmore Hall) and many others.
He has conducted Roderick Williams and the London Mozart Players performing his own arrangement for chamber orchestra of George Butterworth’s Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad.
He is an experienced competition adjudicator, recently judging the Final of the Association of English Singers and Speakers Patricia Routledge Competition, the Final of the Trinity Laban English Song Competition, the Whitgift School Piano Competition and the Clare College Carol Competition.
William is also the founder and Artistic Director of the London English Song Festival, the Director of Music at the Royal Hospital Chelsea and the Musical Director of both Dulwich Choral Society and The London Chorus.