Collaborative Arts Research Initiative

Susan  Williams

• Title: Associate Professor
• Department: Voice
• College: School of Music

Bio

Susan Williams, soprano and Associate Professor of Music, has performed nationally and internationally in a wide range of leading opera roles and as a vocal soloist. As part of a 2022 concert tour in Brasilia, Brazil, she performed at Casa Thomas Jefferson, and performed and gave masterclasses at the Universidade de Brasilia, and Escola de Música. In 2019, she performed with the President’s Orchestra of Tajikistan through the Pitch Pipe Foundation and gave masterclasses in Kathmandu, Nepal at the invitation of the U.S. Embassy to teach masterclasses and participate in panel discussions at various academic and cultural institutions in the city. In March of 2019, she made her third visit to Havana, Cuba where she performed at the Sala de conciertos Ignacio Cervantes, lectured, and taught master classes with students at the Instituto Superior de Arte. She has toured in Kolkata, India twice as part of a series of concerts sponsored by Kolkata Classics. During a sabbatical research trip in 2022, she guest lectured at The Royal Irish Academy of Music and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

She has performed with Mississippi Opera, Opera Birmingham, the Cleveland Orchestra, Lyric Opera Cleveland, Cleveland Opera, the Master Chorale of South Florida, the Frost Symphony Orchestra, Miami’s Mainly Mozart Festival, the Tuscaloosa Symphony, the Akron Symphony, the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, the Cleveland Bach Consort, the Duke Symphony Orchestra, UA’s Huxford Symphony, and the Johnson City Symphony.

A graduate of Birmingham-Southern College, she earned a master’s degree at the University of Akron, and her Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In addition to teaching applied voice at UA, she teaches voice pedagogy courses, oversees the UA Voice Lab, serves on the UA School of Music’s IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access) Committee, and is co-Coordinator of the voice area.

Her scholarly interests include using body movement systems and integrating virtual anatomy technologies to enhance student learning in the studio. Her publications can be found in The Journal of Singing and Voice Prints: Journal of the New York Singing Teacher’s Association (NYSTA). Dr. Williams is a 200-hour Registered Yoga Teacher with an additional 100-hour training in pranayama, a yogic system of breathwork.