Welcome to the homepage of Nathan Lewis Williams. Croeso! I am a multi-faceted musician based in Glastonbury, Somerset U.K. with a short lifetime's worth (20 years or so...) of experience gigging, teaching and recording music, as well as presenting talks, lectures and workshops on various musical and esoteric subjects. I sing in English and Welsh and play traditional and original music on various stringed instruments, including guitar, bouzouki, piano and bass. I hold a BMus(Hons) degree, which has helped with my understanding of classical composition and avant-garde musical forms; I also have a history of involvement with radio and various experimental theatrical and festival projects in the UK and abroad. As well as gigging regularly, I currently work professionally in schools and in Glastonbury town as a teacher of music theory, guitar, bass, piano etc, and also as occasional sound engineer for various folk and festival bands.
In recent years I have been active in the South West of England promoting and playing acoustic music - both solo and in bands - and organising various festival stages and musical and 'bardic' events. I have performed traditional and original music in English and Welsh with Inter-Celtic dance bands such as Dragonsfly, The Green Angels and The Resonators, and accompanied and collaborated with folk singers including Catrin O'Neill, Sarah Curtis and Emma Pickerill, Over the years I have recorded and mixed music in the studio for numerous musical artists, as well as continuing to produce my own original material and arrangements of favourite - and occasionally obscure - traditional songs; click on the menu to hear some examples...
A major recent project was engineering and mixing the second Dragonsfly album, to which I contributed the title track The Ridgeway; I also arranged and produced the instrumental hurdy-gurdy piece 'The Dream' by Cliff Stapleton, as well as my version of trad. Welsh folk song 'Dacw Nghariad', which I had the honour of performing at Glastonbury Festival with the band during a summer tour in 2004. In recent festival seasons I have played solo and with various bands at (amongst other groovy gatherings...): The Big Green Gathering , Resurgence , Lorient Festival Interceltique, and The Celtic Festival of Wales.
In a previous youthful life I presented a Welsh language rock show on Sain Y Gororau Radio, and gigged around Wales with starstruck indie band Llesmair, supporting our musical heroes, such as Y Cyrff, Ffa Coffi Pawb, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and Cerrig Melys. Those were the days...! We recorded videos for Welsh T.V., and a session for B.B.C. Radio Cymru (as did poet/singer Gwilym Morus and myself in 1997), but life moved ever so quickly in those days, and study, work and travel called us all inevitably away from such antics...
Reconnecting with Wales, and all things Cymric, during the past four years has been a joy, and here in Glastonbury I have been busily involved in helping to establish the Bardic Chair (Gorsedd) of Ynys Witrin - a modern revival of an ancient Druidic tradition, based on the Welsh and Cornish 'Eisteddfod' bardic festivals.
Further to this, in recent years I recently established (with folk singer Emma Pickerill) the popular Fabulous Furry Folk Club at Glastonbury Assembly Rooms, which hosted over 50 weekly open sessions and 16 full scale concerts and seasonal bardic events over a two year period, culminating at Winter Solstice 2008. This has evolved into a number of folk sessions in the town and regular gigs in the King Arthur pub's beautiful back room, as well as increasingly well attended concerts from visiting folk artists in the atmospheric stone hall at the Assembly Rooms. My current intention is to bring bilingual Welsh, Cornish and Breton bands to Glastonbury to continue the interceltic / Brythonic connection.
My life is spent juggling these multifarious musical commitments, as well as constantly learning a wealth of traditional and self-penned material in English and Welsh, which I sing and play (on cittern, bouzouki and guitar) on festival stages, round fires and in sessions, whenever and wherever I can! I am currently involved in organising the musical programme for the next Glastonbury May Festival, which has blossomed over the last few years into a week-long arts festival (Avalon CAN) with much community involvement and a strong outdoor element - the ancient May fire festival of Beltane is alive and well in Avalon!...
Please click on the 'menu' links to view details of my various projects and creative work. (This part of the site is under construction.)