| Biography | Llyr Williams (born 1976 in Pentrebychan, Wrexham, Wales) is a Welsh pianist.
He inherited an interest in opera from his father, and before the age of seven he was going to performances at Llandudno and Manchester. He started with the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, but by the age of ten he had developed a taste for those of Richard Wagner as well. He began piano lessons at the age of seven. By the age eleven he had passed Grades I-VIII, all with Distinction.
Williams was educated at Ysgol Hooson in Rhosllannerchrugog and Ysgol Morgan Llwyd in Wrexham, and then read music at The Queen's College, Oxford from 1995-1998, finishing with a First-Class degree and being awarded The Gibbs Prize in Music for outstanding performance in his final examinations. He attended the Royal Academy of Music as a postgraduate scholar and studied with Michael Dussek, Iain Ledingham, Hamish Milne, Julius Drake, and Irina Zaritskaya. He won every available prize at the Academy and received its highest academic award, the Diploma of the Royal Academy of Music (DipRAM) (2000). Upon graduating he was elected to a Shinn[disambiguation needed] Fellowship (2000-02), during the tenure of which he studied conducting and coaching singing. |