Welsh baritone Jeremy Huw Williams is touring the United States and made a two-day stop at The University of Tulsa in mid-November. Along with his collaborative pianist, Paula Fan, he presented A Recital of Songs and Arias in Meinig Recital Hall on Nov. 8. The program of works by English, American and Welsh composers celebrated the 150th birthday of Ralph Vaughan Williams with a presentation of his well-known cycle for baritone, Songs of Travel. A professional colleague of Joseph Rivers, J. Donald Feagin Professor of Music and Film Studies at TU, Williams included Rivers’ Four Songs After Women Poets, as well as an aria from Rivers’ opera Prairie Dreams. The artists also chose to present a little-known aria, or to be exact, a dramatic scena titled My Last Duchess by Grace Williams, a colleague and confidante of the great British composer Benjamin Britten. The concert closed with Three Welsh Folk Song Arrangements by Britten sung in the native language of the artist.
Williams and Fan also presented a song recital for students in recital class on Nov. 9. They called their program Man Is for the Woman Made, and it explored the complex relationship between “Mr. and Mrs.” through works of Purcell, Caccini, Suesse, Thomas, Taillefaire, Fauré, Duparc, Schumann, Britten, Debussy, Barber and Mathias.