Carol Anne Williams

Dr. Carol Anne Williams D.M.A., ARAM, DipRam, AD(Yale), FRCO, FTCL, ARCM was the first woman civic organist in the United States. [ [http://www.melcot.com Concert Organist] ] She has been the San Diego Civic Organist since 2001 and Artistic Director of the Spreckels Organ Society in San Diego, California. [ [http://www.serve.com/sosorgan Speckels Organ Society] ]

British born, Carol spent five years at the 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, she became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists and a Fellow of Trinity College London plus an Associate of the Royal College of Music.

Carol has also visited Paris for study with Daniel Roth, the Organist at the Church of St. Sulpice where the famous Charles-Marie Widor was organist for sixty-three years. Moving to the USA, Carol undertook postgraduate study at Yale University under the direction of Professor Thomas Murray where she was appointed University Chapel Organist and was awarded an Artist Diploma together with 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 for her D.M.A. degree.

In October 2001, Carol was appointed San Diego Civic Organist and Artistic Director of the Spreckels Organ Society and she now devotes all her time to concerts. Other venues at which Carol has performed include: Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore; 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 Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Holland, Germany and Singapore. En route, Carol has been elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM) in recognition of her contribution to music. A regular broadcaster in the UK and in America, she 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 recitals on a newly-installed Austin organ in Beijing's Forbidden City Concert Hall. Carol has been interviewed "live" on many radio programs, in which she has highlighted her profound love of the King of Instruments, and she is featured in the national-awareness video "Pulling out all the Stops" when she was filmed in concert at St. Thomas' Church in New York's Fifth Avenue. She was also privileged to take part in the Virgil Fox Memorial Concert held in the fall of 2000 at New York's Riverside Church and a recording of the memorable event has been released as a double-CD by Gothic Records.

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