Conductor and pianist William Kelley is a versatile artist, equally at home on the podium and at the keyboard. He collaborates frequently with vocalists and instrumentalists in a wide array of projects including recitals, opera, chamber music, theater, and orchestral concerts. He has performed for audiences across the United States and Europe in a range of repertoire from Baroque to jazz to world premieres.
Kelley is currently 2. Kapellmeister at Theater Bremen. He made his European conducting debut in 2017 with the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. During the 2019/2020 season, he conducted Abraham’s Märchen im Grand Hotel, Carmen.maquia (version for ballet), a world premiere by Manuel Renggli: Dschungel (2020), and Piazzolla’s Tango Operetta, María de Buenos Aires. In 2018, debuts included a world premiere in the Lucerne Festival: Im Amt für Todesangelegenheiten (Heydenaber, 2018) with the 21st Century Orchestra, a concert with the Prague Radio Symphony and tenor, Petr Nekoranec, and a return to the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester for Mozart’s Alcina.
Previous performance highlights include recitals with tenor, Petr Nekoranec, Schubert’s Winterreise with baritone, Christopher Herbert on Trinity Wall Street’s Twelfth Night Festival, a residency with the New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) at the Caramoor Festival, a production of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges at The Juilliard School, recital performances at Alice Tully Hall, The Juilliard School, the Harvard Club, Merkin Hall, and a Youtube-live streamed masterclass with Joyce DiDonato.
William made his Lincoln Center debut with a recital in Alice Tully Hall alongside baritone, Theo Hoffman, which included the New York premiere of Jonathan Dove’s song set, Three Tennyson Songs [2011]. Other highlights include an appearance in the Juilliard Focus! Festival featuring works of contemporary Japanese composers, Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin on the ART DE L’AUTRE concert series in Berlin, Germany, performances on the Wednesdays at One concert series from Alice Tully Hall, live streamed masterclasses with Gerald Finley, Emanuel Villaume, and Fabio Luisi at Juilliard, and a theater-piece in collaboration with the Royal Irish Academy of Music entitled Ten Thousand Miles Away at The Lir Academy in Dublin, Ireland.
William has worked previously as a pianist and coach for Juilliard Opera, Luzerner Theater, Music Academy of the West, UNCG/Greensboro Opera and the opera studio at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf, Germany.
William is a graduate of The Juilliard School and The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His primary teachers include Jonathan Feldman, Margo Garrett, Brian Zeger, and John Salmon.