Joel Williams is a British tenor and member of the Royal College of Music International Opera Studio where he studies with Tim Evans-Jones, and is the Kiri te Kanawa Scholar supported by the Independent Opera Scholarship.
Joel made his operatic debuts at the Royal Opera House, English National Opera and Glyndebourne as a boy treble with Trinity Boys Choir playing Cobweb in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of Die Zauberflöte’s Drei Knaben, and peasant-child in Puccini's Turandot. In oratorio he performed as the boy-king Joas in Handel’s Athalia with Paul McCreesh, and toured with the Monteverdi Choir and Sir John Eliot Gardiner.
Joel spent a year in Princeton, New Jersey, where he sang with the choirs of Trinity Church, St Thomas Fifth Avenue, NYC, and co-directed the Episcopal Choir of Princeton University. He went on to take up a Choral Scholarship King’s College, Cambridge, where he studied for a degree in History. With the choir, Joel took part in numerous international tours, recordings, and radio and television broadcasts. He was a soloist on many of their recordings, and has performed solos in venues including the Royal Albert Hall, the Concertgebouw and the Sydney Opera House for which he received glowing reviews from the international press.
On stage, Joel has played Le Ruisseau Les Fêtes D'Hébé (Bastille, Opéra de Paris), Lysander A Midsummer Night's Dream, Count Belfiore La Finta Giardiniera, Mayor Albert Herring, Hexe Hänsel und Gretel, Dr Blind Die Fledermaus (Royal College of Music International Opera School), Odoardo Ariodante (London Handel Festival), Oronte Alcina (Ryedale Festival Opera), Tamino The Magic Flute (Cambridge University Opera Society), and Satyavan Savitri (Cover, British Youth Opera). Joel created the role of Daniel in a new opera Bel and the Dragon by Alex Paxton for Tête-à-Tête Opera. In 2015 Joel was a selected to be part of the Southrepps Young Artists Programme by Ben Johnson. In the summer of 2017 Joel sang Don Ottavio Don Giovanni as a Young Artist with Opera Holland Park. In 2018 Joel is an Alvarez Young Artist at Garsington Opera.
Joel's concert engagements include Stravinksy Threni (LPO, Jurowski),Cilea Adriana Lecouvreur (Verbier Festival, Gergiev), Verdi Otello Act One (Cambridge University Musical Society, Richard Farnes), Pärt Passio (Choir of King's College Cambridge, Stephen Cleobury), Bach St John Passion (Merton College Choir, Oxford, Benjamin Nicholas), Handel Messiah (Bedford Choral Society), Mozart Requiem and Cavalli Magnificat (Danesborough Chorus), Haydn Creation (Grantham Choral Society), Handel Acis and Galatea (Lymington Choral Society) and Vivaldi Magnificat and Gabrieli In Ecclesii (South Somerset Choral Society).
Joel is passionate about art song. He has won the Somerset Song Prize, the Sir Anthony Lewis Memorial Prize, the Sidney Sussex Lieder Competition, second prize in the Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards, and third prize in the Brooks-van der Pump English Song competition and the Joan Chissell Schumann competition. Joel was a Pembroke Lieder Scholar with Joseph Middleton, and a Britten-Pears Young Artist with Sarah Connolly and Christian Curnyn. Joel performed with Kitty Whately and Joseph Middleton at the Wigmore Hall, which was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. He has given recitals for the Oxford Lieder Festival, Leeds Lieder, the Barber Institute at Birmingham University, the Leeds University International Concert Series and at the Victoria Rooms in Bristol.
Joel is also so grateful to those who have supported him up to this point. Many thanks to the Bawden Family, the Williams Family, the Mason Family, the H F Music Award Foundation, the Ladies of the Soirée d'Or, the Humphrey Richardson Taylor Charitable Trust, the Josephine Baker Trust, the Countess of Munster Musical Trust, the Kathleen Trust, the Seary Charitable Trust, the Il Circolo Italian Cultural Association, the Ryan Davies Memorial Fund, the Mario Lanza Foundation, the Philip Bates Trust, and the Michael James Trust.
Free recital - retiring collection