Carol Williams

San Diego Civic Organist and Artistic Director of the Spreckels Organ Society

 D.M.A., ARAM, Dip Ram, AD (Yale), FRCO, FTCL, ARCM, HonFNMSM, FPerASMC

             In October 2001, Dr.Carol Williams was appointed San Diego Civic Organist and is the first woman in the USA to hold such a post. She was also appointed Artistic Director of the Spreckels Organ Society.

            Carol spent five years at London’s Royal Academy of Music where she specialized in organ performing as a student of David Sanger and obtained the Academy's prestigious Recital Diploma together with an LRAM (organ) and an LRAM (piano).  She was awarded all the major prizes for organ performing and, during her studies, became an FRCO and an FTCL plus an ARCM. Carol has also visited Paris for study with Daniel Roth, the Organist of St. Sulpice. Recently, she has been made an Honorary Fellow of the North and Midlands School of Music (HonFNMSM) and a Fellow in Performance of the Australian Society of Musicology and Composition (FPerfASMC). Carol has been elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM) in recognition of her contribution to music.

            Moving to the USA, Carol undertook postgraduate study at Yale University under the direction of Professor Thomas Murray, was appointed University Chapel Organist and was awarded an Artist Diploma plus the Charles Ives prize for outstanding achievement.  Then to New York where she became the Associate Organist at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Long Island’s Garden City and undertook Doctoral study under Professor McNeil Robinson at the Manhattan School of Music where she received the Helen Cohn award with her D.M.A degree.

            Venues at which Carol has performed include: Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris; St. Sulpice, Paris; Westminster Abbey; St. Paul’s Cathedral; King’s College, Cambridge; Queen’s College, Oxford; Blenheim Palace; Roskilde Cathedral, Denmark; Woolsey Hall, Yale University; Memorial Chapel, Harvard University; St’ Patrick’s, New York; Washington National Cathedral; St. Ignatius Loyola, New York; Riverside Church, New York.  She has also given concerts in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Holland, Germany and Singapore.

            Carol has been the guest performer with a number of leading orchestras including the BBC Concert Orchestra and, more recently, with the Beijing Symphony Orchestra when she performed the inaugural concerts on a newly-installed Austin organ in Beijing’s Forbidden City Concert Hall. She has also featured in a video “Carol Williams: A Musical Tour of Blenheim Palace” having previously recorded a CD on the Father Willis organ “Music from Blenheim Palace.”

Carol Williams is represented by:

 Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, USA

PVA Management, UK