Festival to celebrate pioneering Welsh composer Grace Williams

Nation.Cymru staff

A festival celebrating the life and work of pioneering Welsh composer Grace Williams is to be held next year in the town where she was born.

The Grace Williams Festival will take place in Barry in February 2027, with a programme of concerts, recitals, talks, heritage walks, art workshops and film screenings. Its website has been launched ahead of the event.

Williams, born in Barry in 1906, is regarded as one of the leading Welsh composers of the 20th century and became the first British woman to compose the score for a feature film.

Born into a musical family, she learned the piano and violin as a child and accompanied the choir run by her father, William Matthews Williams.

Her interest in composing developed while she was at school and in 1923 she won the Morfydd Owen scholarship to study at what is now Cardiff University.

Three years later, she began studying at the Royal College of Music in London, where her teachers included Ralph Vaughan Williams. She later studied in Vienna and went on to teach in London.

Williams returned to Barry in 1945 and remained in her home town for the rest of her life, concentrating increasingly on composition.

Four years later, she made history by composing the score for the 1949 film Blue Scar, becoming the first British woman to score a feature film.

Her compositions included orchestral, choral, chamber and vocal music, with many influenced by Wales and its landscape. Among her best-known works are Fantasia on Welsh Nursery Tunes, Penillion, Sea Sketches and The Ballad of the Mari Lwyd.

Despite her reputation, relatively few of Williams’ compositions had been published or commercially recorded by the time of her death in 1977.

Interest in her work has grown substantially since then, with previously neglected compositions performed and recorded in recent years.

The festival aims to build on that revival by introducing Williams’ work to new audiences while giving those already familiar with her music an opportunity to explore it in greater depth.

Legacy

Co-organiser Dr Diane Williams said: “Grace Williams was a remarkable composer with a powerful connection to Barry and to Wales.

“We are delighted to bring her music and story to audiences in February 2027 and to celebrate the extraordinary contribution she made to Welsh musical life.”

The programme will also explore the composer’s relationship with Barry and the Vale of Glamorgan, including the places, experiences and Welsh cultural traditions which influenced her work.

The festival will be launched at an invitation-only event on February 2, when Welsh harpist Kathryn Rees will perform music by Williams, followed by talks about her life by Dr Jonathan Hicks and Dr Nick Jones.

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