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Nathan is music director for Jubilee Opera this term, conducting their production of Michael Hurd’s Hip Hip Horatio! in Aldeburgh Jubilee on Sunday December 7th – with two performances, at 3pm and 5pm. The show is directed by the exciting young director Katie Kim Hackman.

Hip Hip Horatio! is an entertaining and dramatic piece, starting and ending in Trafalgar Square, charting Admiral Lord Nelson’s life and achievements. The music is lively and engaging, exploring songs of different genres in the choruses and, with a narrator and solo parts, allowing opportunities for cameo roles and a number of choreographed dances.

Jubilee Opera’s work is rare, if not unique, in Suffolk. Working with children and professional practitioners from different areas of performance art, the standard aimed at is exacting and rewarding, giving opportunities to a wide range of young people who would not otherwise have such a chance. Around 30 children aged from 7 to 17 will perform the piece, with a special arrangement of the score made by Timothy Henty specially for Jubilee Opera.

To book for the show click here, and to learn more about Jubilee Opera please visit their website.

Over the summer Nathan was invited to write (and perform!) a new piece by the illustrator James Mayhew and violinist Caroline Speca for their fabulolus project Once Upon a Tune, for performance at the Fisher Theatre in Bungay on September 28th. These spectacular events, a delight for adults and children alike, see James create new works of art during the performance of live music. His canvas is projected onto a big screen while he creates the artwork, so the audience can see every detailed brushstroke of the piece come to fruition – in a matter of a few minutes or less! It is genuinely thrilling!

Nathan’s new piece is an arrangement of the Hornpipe from his song-cycle Grey and Green – the original song sees the ghosts of lost fishermen summoned by the bells of the submerged Dunwich churches, and James obliged with a painting of grisly skeletons dancing grotesquely in a submerged vault! Caroline’s violin became a sort of sailor’s fiddle, imitating the sounds of sea-shantys and becoming increasingly frenzied and devilish as the piece went on!

Other works performed/painted in the concert were taken from the Firebird, Scheherezade, Rusalka, the Carnival of the Animals, and the Per Gynt. The children were also thrilled by James vivid telling of these stories before the performance.

The resulting paintings were auctioned to raise valuable funds for Musical Lifelines, Caroline Speca’s wonderful musical provision for people living in Bungay, tackling loneliness and isolation, especially those with long-term health conditions. You can find them on Facebook by the link above.

Baritone Robert Gildon and pianist Nathan Williamson gave a performance of Suffolk’s Songs – a recital of works inspired by the sounds, landscape and stories of Suffolk – at one of the county’s unofficial ‘capitals’, Bury St. Edmund’s.

Nathan’s song-cycle Grey and Green are all my Light was showcased, with writer Robert Jellicoe reading his texts (in beautiful lilting Suffolk dialect) prior to the performance.

Other composers featured included Martin Shaw (whose 150th birthday is celebrated this year), Imogen Holst, Benjamin Britten, Doreen Carwithen, EJ Moeran, as well as Ralph Vaughan Williams and George Butterworth, whose collection of Southwold folk songs and dances from 1911 strongly influenced Nathan’s new work.

This spring and summer Nathan was privileged to work with Britten-Pears Arts, composers Jessie Grimes, Jon Hargreaves, and Raph Clarkson, as well as wonderful young singers from primary schools in Framlingham, in recording and premiering the latest collection of Friday Afternoons songs.

This collection of songs is part of the ‘5 Nations’ collection, where children from England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Northern Ireland worked with a composer to produce a new song about their country. You can find the whole collection here!

Nathan’s dramatic, 30-minute song-cycle, Grey and Green are all my Light, setting texts by Robert Jellicoe, ‘came home’ to Southwold on June 22nd with a performance in St. Edmund’s Church as part of the Southwold Arts Festival.

The songs set poetry and prose from Robert Jellicoe’s recent book Shorelines – Voices of Southwold Fishermen, which provides a vivid account of the culture of seafaring in and around Southwold, based mainly on Jellicoe’s own aural history archive which he started collecting from locals in the 1970s.

He was the inspired to write poetic prefaces to each chapter of the book, telling of voices of lost seafarers and their efforts to communicate with those left behind – extracts of these were set by Nathan Williamson in his romantic, virtuosic, and dramatic song-cycle.

Nathan accompanied baritone Robert Gildon in this performance, part of a programme of ‘Suffolk’s Songs’, featuring music with strong ties to Suffolk, including work by Vaughan Williams, Butterworth, Britten, Carwithen, and Martin Shaw.

Southwold’s stunning St. Edmund’s Church provided the perfect backdrop for this performance, bringing to a conclusion a long and hard-working season for both artists – and composer! A long summer holiday beckons…!

A further performance of ‘Suffolk Songs’ – the last in this current run of events, which has seen performances in a dozen or so concerts across the country – takes place in Bury St. Edmund’s on September 15th. Click here for more details.

Cambridge Youth Opera (CYO) have commissioned Nathan to compose two new songs as part of their ongoing creative project ‘Footprints Through Time’. The project was inspired by a collaboration with the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, where young people from CYO were able to learn about archeological finds from the region. From this experience the idea of an opera emerged…

As CYO describes: ‘The young people were inspired by the Trumpington Bed Burial to write the story of a ghost of a young Saxon girl who meets her modern counterpart. The action takes place on Trumpington Meadows housing development, where the real Saxon girl was discovered.’

There then followed a series of workshops creating the story of the opera, composing song lyrics and creating designs and images for the opera.

Two songs were then set to music by Nathan: Roby sees the Ghost – the ghost of the Saxon girl tries to attract the attention of her modern counterpart – and then Odilia, where the Saxon girl Odilia sings of her longing to be remembered.

This project was made posible thanks to the generous support of the University of Cambridge. More details about the project as a whole can be found at the CYO website.

Piano Circus followed up their workshop with 3rd year undergraduate composers at Brunel University earlier in the year with a concert premiering the four works we had helped develop and coach. There was so much to admire in the student’s music and it was wonderful to hear the works brought to fruition in performance – congratulations everyone, and good luck for your future as you move on from Brunel!

This concert was part of the end of year showcase by music and other performing arts students and nicely rounded off another year of the ensmeble’s Artist Association with the music department. We look forward to next year, building on what has been a really successful and enjoyable collaboration with the students and faculty.

On May 2nd 2025 the Southwold Music Trust staged a concert in partnership with the Southwold Town Mayor, Councillor Simon Flunder, and Southwold Town Council.

Councillor Flunder has chosen the Music Trust as one of his nominated charities for his current year, lending us valuable advocacy within the town helping us both with the profie and reach, as well as the financial foundation, for our projects.

To demonstrate the importance and significance of music within Southwold and the surrounding community, the whole concert programme was perormed by local amateurs, children and community groups. Performers ranged from 8 to 80+ years of age! The audience were treated to a splendid array and variety of music of the highest order.

Donations are yet to be counted and collated but thanks to the full church and the fabulous support of so many people we estimate to have raised well over £3000 for the Music Trust – more to follow. Thank you everyone for their support and generosity.

The image here shows the Southwold Primary School Choir giving thir performance on the evening.

On March 22nd Nathan gave a solo recital for New Music Brighton including eight world premieres by NMB composers. Alongside these were performances of Malcolm Lipkin’s 6th Piano Sonata, a selection of Nocturnes, and a showing of a short documentary about Lipkin’s piano music, incuding the making of Nathan’s CD of Lipkin’s later piano works.

We are very grateful indeed for the support of the Lipkin Foundation and friends of New Music Brighton for making this event possible.

As part of Piano Circus’ role as Associate Artists at Brunel University, this year we have been working with 3rd year undergraduate composers writing pieces for multiple keyboards. In January Piano Circus gave a workshop on four new compositions under the direction of composition tutor Colin Riley (who has also written some of his own, magical, pieces for Piano Circus!)

We were really impressed with the variety, colour and energy of the students’ new music. We worked in detail with them on how to clearly notate music of rhythmic complexity, issues of balance within an ensemble of similar instruments, and adding textural variety and development within a minimal aesthetic.

We will be back at Brunel in May this year for a performance of the finished works as part of the annual music department showcase.