Golden Williams Duo

The Golden Williams Duo uses music and the arts as a mirror to reflect on and dialogue with the world around us, by creating and performing thought-provoking music relevant to our own time. Our viola and cello ensemble is committed to collaborations with living composers.

With a 2026 New Works Grant administered by the Queens Arts Fund, from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the Golden Williams Duo has commissioned composers Stephanie Leotsakos, Nick Revel, Sunny Knable, Chandler Carter, William Susman, and Dennis Bathory-Kitsz to write new music for our duo on the theme of extreme weather, especially as it relates to the borough of Queens. In June 2026, we presented Music and Art in Dialogue about Extreme Weather, through a pre-concert Creators’ Panel and a performance. At our pre-concert Creators’ Panel, we showcased a behind-the-scenes look at how the composers designed their music and how the approach to each piece varies for the composers and performers. Audiences had a chance to hear samples of each composition performed by the duo. While the Creators’ Panel is intended for the general public, the event was especially relevant for those interested in artists’ working processes and the collaborative give-and-take involved in creating multimedia art, as well as for composers, performers, educators, artists, and environmentalists. Led by visual artist Jerri A. Castillo, audience members had the opportunity during the performance to create watercolor artwork that is inspired by the music. These works for viola and cello duo consider local extreme storm events such as lives lost to basement flooding in Corona, Woodside, and Jamaica during Hurricane Ida; groundwater flooding in The Hole; and shoreline damage in the Rockaways from Hurricane Sandy. The event also considered local rebuilding, infrastructure sustainability, and community preparedness plans to contextualize the artistic dialogue.

In February of 2025, The Golden Williams Duo hosted a “Golden Williams Duo and Friends” performance for four violas and four cellos, after receiving full grant funding from the Music Performance Trust Fund, administered by Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. The concert featured the works of Dorothy Rudd Moore, Anthony R. Green, Florence Price, Julius Eastman, Julia Perry, Sydney Guillaume, Quinn Mason, and Sakari Dixon.

Previous premieres have included works by Anthony R. Green, David Bertrand, Clarissa Baquiran, David Wolfson, Leonor Falcon, and Michael Kosch.

The Golden Williams Duo first performed together in 2017 at the Custer Institute and Observatory in Southold, NY, as members of The Red Door Chamber Players. More recently, the Golden Williams Duo has performed at Spectrum Music, Symphony Space’s Bar Thalia, Maple Grove Cemetery, Our Saviour’s Atonement Lutheran Church, Regalia Roasting Collective, Willets Road School, Zion Lutheran Church (Pittsfield, MA), Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, Metropolitan Playhouse, Castle Village, the Music Conservatory of Westchester, the Vail-Leavitt Music Hall, Sumner and Hotchkiss Halls (Chestertown, MD), Mountain Springs Music Festival (Draper, Utah), and at the Bi-Annual Conference of the American Viola Society held at The Colburn School (Los Angeles, CA).