William Peacock, composer and singer
William Peacock is a Boston-based composer, tenor, and countertenor.
William Peacock, composer and singer
William Peacock is a Boston-based composer, tenor, and countertenor.
About
Photo courtesy of Robert Branning.
EDUCATION + BACKGROUND
William Peacock (he/they) is a nonbinary American composer and singer. Born in Quincy, Massachusetts, William has spent much of his life living in the South Shore area, most recently basing his activities in Revere, MA. William is a graduate of Boston University, where he obtained a bachelor's of music, majoring in vocal performance and composition and theory, as well as a master's of music in composition and theory.
SINGER
William is both a tenor and countertenor, and is a frequent singer in the Boston choral scene in both voice types. William's engagements as a singer include concerts with Triad: Boston Choral Collective, Ensemble Altera, Nightingale Vocal Ensemble, and Analog Chorale, among others. William also performed with the Tanglewood Chorus and the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Antonio Pappano in 2022 for their eager return to Symphony Hall following the pandemic in a performance series of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, as well as in a recent performance of Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel under assistant conductor Samy Rachid as a member of the choir Carduus.
COMPOSER
As a composer, William was nominated as a finalist for the international Young Composers Competition. William is also a three time recipient of Boston University's Wainwright Prize for composition, winning twice in the category of a "song composed on a sonnet", and once in the category of a "song composed about nature". William typically writes music for smaller ensembles, including chamber works, solo works, and art song, though he is equally comfortable composing for large ensembles.
Stylistically, William utilizes lyricism among polytonal, freely atonal, and non-functional harmonic contexts, along with biting rhythmic vitality. William's musical language is presented in tandem with a complex (and unnervingly humorous) emotional palette, which is displayed through a critical lens of the social climate at large. As such, the subject matter of these works often pertain to politics and social justice in the modern world, while also embracing levity and the absurd in equal parts - in short, what you might get if you put the musical works of Francis Poulenc, Charles Ives, and Gabriel Kahane in a blender.
Noteworthy musical events include the premiere of Four Fantasy Pieces for flute, Bb clarinet, and bassoon, the recent premiere of a song cycle for mezzo-soprano and piano showcasing poetry by Darío Espina Pérez, and a premiere by the Mivos Quartet of his work Repeated Friction, as well as the premiere of a brief solo a capella work for soprano by contemporary vocalist Stephanie Lamprea titled Allergies Not So Bad.
WCRB 99.5
William is employed full-time (an increasingly rare feat for a classical musician) as the lead music programmer for Classical Radio Boston where he is a regular contributor of web content both to CRB broadly and to his own blog series about contemporary classical music, This Just In.
THE REST
In addition to his endeavors in the classical music realm, William performs as one half of the experimental noise duo Fiberglass Peacock. When he isn’t composing or singing, William enjoys reading and writing poetry, making art, cooking, baking, playing video games, and keeping informed with current events across the globe.
