Richard Rodney Bennett: Songs Before Sleep

Roderick Williams is active in the opera house, on the concert platform and in recital, encompassing a repertoire from the baroque to world premieres.

He has enjoyed close associations with Opera North and Scottish Opera, and has also worked for English National Opera and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. As at home in contemporary music as in the standard repertoire, he has taken roles in the world premieres of Sally Beamish's Monster (for Scottish Opera), David Sawer's From Morning to Midnight and Martin Butler's A Better Place (for English National Opera) and Alexander Knaifel's Alice in Wonderland and Michel van der Aa's After Life (for Netherlands Opera). Further contemporary roles include Jaufre Rudel in Saariaho's L'amour de loin (ENO), Eddie in Mark-Anthony Turnage's Greek (BBC) and roles in Tippett's The Knot Garden (Barbican) and Birtwistle's The Second Mrs Kong (Royal Festival Hall).

He has taken major roles in conductor Richard Hickox's semi-staged performances of opera, including Britten's Gloriana (Aldeburgh, 2003), Walton's Troilus and Cressida and most of the Vaughan Williams operas.  Other concert performances include Henze, Strauss, Stravinsky and Wagner (Donner in Das Rheingold for ENO).

He is an accomplished recital artist who can be heard at Wigmore Hall, at many festivals, and on Radio 3, where he has appeared on Iain Burnside's 'Voices' programme.  His numerous recordings include Vaughan Williams, Berkeley and Britten operas for Chandos, and an extensive repertoire of English song with pianist Iain Burnside for Naxos. Roderick Williams is also a composer and has had works premiered at the Wigmore and Barbican Halls, the Purcell Room and live on national radio.

Cellist Oliver Coates is an Artist in Residence at the Southbank Centre in London, supported by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. He attained the highest degree result in the Royal Academy of Music's history before going on to complete an MPhil with distinction at New College, Oxford. He is now an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.

He studied the cello with Colin Carr, Lionel Handy and Heather Harrison. He performs as a solo cellist, a chamber musician and a guest principal with the London Sinfonietta and a principal with Aurora Orchestra; he plays all kinds of classical music alongside new experimental forms - such as working with Mira Calix for Warp Records -  also writing and recording his own music, and in collaboration with other artists.

He has performed concertos and recitals across Europe and the Far East, including a tour of performances of the Dvorak Concerto in the composer's centenary year. He regularly plays the major concertos as well as the core classical repertoire of Beethoven, Brahms and Bach works for cello. He made a Wigmore Hall solo debut in 2009, playing the world premiere of a childhood Cello Sonata by Benjamin Britten. He also plays regularly in 'the house of bedlam', an electronic, instrumental and spoken word ensemble that fuses elusive elements from blues, rock and folk.

He is proud to have worked closely on new music with the most important new composers including Emily Hall, Larry Goves, David Fennessy, Anna Meredith, Chris Mayo, Matt Rogers, Charlie Piper, Mark Bowden, Mica Levi and many more. He has worked with composers such as Ades, Birtwistle, Saariaho, Lindberg, Gubaidulina and Jonathan Harvey on their music. He has also worked and recorded with artists such as Massive Attack, Goldie, Sigur Ros, Micachu and the Shapes, Shlomo and Gurrumul.