Ed Williams

Ed Williams is a guitarist, harpsichordist, composer and improviser working between Marseille, France, and Basel, Switzerland. Their practice moves between early music, free improvisation, experimental composition and noise, using instruments such as acoustic and electric guitar, harpsichord, clavichord and microtonal organ. They studied composition at the University of Edinburgh and continued in electroacoustic and chamber composition at the Marseille Conservatory.

Williams has developed solo and ensemble projects including Heard of Bears, TANDEM and the Grand 8 Ensemble, and has performed with the Insub Meta Orchestra. Their artistic research connects sixteenth-century improvisational practices, microtonal tuning and contemporary approaches to collective creation, sometimes described as decomposition. Their recordings have appeared on Editions Wandelweiser, Insub Records, Creative Sources and other experimental labels, while their Echo Chamber podcast explored the social, emotional and philosophical contexts of music-making.

Their Creative Sources album Solos (CS618), released in 2019, consists of three improvisations on electric and classical guitar without effects. Two performances, Aux Soirs Du Chercheur De Noises, were recorded in Marseille in January 2017, while Spectrum, NY was recorded in New York in November 2018. The album presents an intimate study of gesture, bowed and plucked guitar resonances and the changing acoustics of solo performance.