Dublin-born Gillian Williams is widely regarded as one of Ireland’s most gifted violinists. A precocious talent, she picked up the first of a string of awards, first prizes and gold medals at the age of seven. A student at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, she won the most coveted prizes at the Feís Ceol and was a recipient of all major private /State bursaries. She first began performing with the RTE orchestras and the Irish Chamber Orchestra at the age of 17 and went on to study under David Takeno at the Guildhall School of Music, London, graduating with Distinction (1990) and mastering in solo performance (1991). Among her college achievements was her selection by the school’s Director to perform Mozart’s Violin Concerto in A major with the Guildhall Chamber Orchestra in St James’s, Piccadilly and the Barbican Centre. After solo appearances with the NSOI in the 1993 RTE Lunchtime Series at the National Concert Hall, she became Ireland’s first string player to participate in the 1994 Tchaikovsky Competition held in Moscow. One of Dublin’s most sought-after orchestral leaders, she led and co-led the NSOI and the ICO during the 1990s and is permanent Leader of the Orlando Chamber Orchestra conducted by Dr. Ite O’Donovan.
Commanding a wide-ranging repertoire, her characteristic warmth, intensity and clarity have won her public and critical acclaim. Her repertoire for solo violin and orchestra includes Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, concerti by Bruch, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, all the concerti by Mozart -including the Sinfonia Concertante which she performed on several occasions with French cellist Arun Rao as well as Double Concerti by Brahms, Delius and Saint-Saëns. Her several solo performances at the National Concert Hall with the NSOI under distinguished conductors (Markson, Pearce, etc) were all recorded or broadcast live on RTE Lyric FM. Ms Williams also collaborated with a host of distinguished pianists (Philippe Cassard, Roger Vignoles, Elisaveta Blumina, Finghin Collins, Bernard Lansky, Lance Coburn, François Zeitouni, Una Hunt) in chamber music recitals at all the major Dublin venues. Her 2005-cycle of the three violin sonatas by Brahms at the National Gallery was broadcast on Lyric FM. Ms Williams has a special affinity with French music: she has performed Ravel’s Sonata for Violin & Cello no less than forty times as well as chamber music works (sonatas, trios, quartets,etc) by Fauré, Ravel, Poulenc, Messiaen, Debussy (including the viola part of his Trio Sonata), Milhaud, Honegger, Ropartz, Renié, Vierne, Roger-Ducasse, Saint-Saëns and Langlais.
Her partnership with cellist Arun Rao DUO CHAGALL is one of Ireland’s longest and most celebrated. It made its formal debut in 1993 at Dublin’s Alliance Française, although the two musicians had previously played together as Guildhall School students, notably in a performance of Brahms’ Double Concerto Op.102 with a student orchestra. They have since brought seldom-performed masterpieces to Irish audiences and collaborated with distinguished pianists and string players in larger ensembles. DUO CHAGALL appeared on RTE radio and television in the 1990s and recorded a CD of predominantly French music in 2009 (launched in Tower Records, Dublin). They were invited to host summer series at the Musée Vuillod-St-Germain in Pezenas (south of France) in 2011-13, performing works by J.S Bach, Handel, Ravel, Kodaly, Glier, Honegger, Mozart, Villa-Lobos, Milhaud, and took part in the ‘Festival de la Vallée du Tarn’ in
July 2017, where they collaborated with the Franco-Ukranian piano duet Bringuier-Monakh. Eminent Irish conductor and composer Colman Pearce: expressly wrote no fewer than five chamber works for them including Duo Concertante (2017), Piano Trio (May 2018), Duetto d’amore (2021) and In MemoriA-M for violin and piano, in response to the brutal killing of Aisling Murphy in January 2022. All were premiered at the Hugh Lane Gallery.
In 2010 DUO CHAGALL launched the classical series AUTUMN SOUNDS (formerly ‘Fingal Classical Music Festival’) in partnership with Fingal. Initially a three-day event in St Mochta’s Church, Porterstown, the series re-located the following year to the prestigious Ballroom in Farmleigh, the State Residence, at the invitation of the Office of Public Works. AUTUMN SOUNDS has treated music-lovers from Fingal and North Dublin to a wealth of chamber music from
France, Russia, Germany, Norway and England, featuring works by neglected composers and rarely-performed masterpieces alongside ‘popular’ classics, constantly striving to refresh the concept of ‘themed concerts’. In one of the series’s most ambitious project, Ms Williams performed of all the chamber music works including the violin by Robert Schumann between 2014 and 2017. The 2018 edition was entirely dedicated to the chamber music of Claude Debussy
and featured leading harpist Sivan Mage in the Danses sacrée et profane, as well as the Irish Premieres of a reduction for instrumental quintet of his opera Pelléas & Mélisande. 2019 saw the launch of the FINGAL ENSEMBLE, a string group created for the 25 canniversary celebrations of the county’s creation; Ms Williams subsequently directed the ensemble in two renditions of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at the Grand Hotel, Malahide, and Draiocht, Blanchardstown for the 2019 edition of Autum Sounds. The ensemble recorded three live broadcasts for the 2020 series including two large-scale chamber workks: Schubert’s great Octet and Beethoven’s Septet for strings and winds, as well as his his two Romances for violin and orchestra featuring Ms Williams as soloist These three full-length recitals can be seen on the Draiocht dedicated YouTube channel. The duo recorded another live broadcast that year at the behest of the Hugh Lane gallery, the first of its online Sunday@noon series, again celebrating the music of Beethoven (his Eyeglass duet for viola and cello) as well as a world premiere: ‘An equal music’ by Stephen Gardner.
Most recently, Ms Williams recorded a CD of French music from the fin de siècle and the Belle-Èpoque with pianist and scholar Dr. Una Hunt, ‘The French Violin’, with the financial support of Fingal Arts. It includes the world premiere recording of an Idylle for violin and piano by Marguerite Canal (1890 – 1978) and a rare performance of the first Sonata for solo violin by Benjamin Godard (1849-1895), as well as violin favourites by Saint-Saëns (Habanera), Ravel (Tzigane), Fauré (Berceuse), Lili Boulanger and Cécile Chaminade. The CD was launched at the Ballroom, Farmleigh, at this years
edition of Autumn Sounds.
Ms Williams lectures at the TU Dublin Conservatoire.