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EVANS-WILLIAMS, LAURA (1883 - 1944), singer

Name: Laura Evans-williams
Date of birth: 1883
Date of death: 1944
Spouse: R.T. Williams
Parent: Ellen Evans
Parent: John Evans
Gender: Female
Occupation: singer
Area of activity: Music; Performing Arts
Author: Thomas Iorwerth Ellis

Eldest daughter of John and Ellen Evans, born at Bryn Meirion, Henllan, Denbighshire, 7 September 1883. She was educated at Howell's School, Denbigh, and at the Royal Academy of Music, London. She began her career as a contralto, winning prizes at several eisteddfodau; at the Academy she studied under Edward Iles who developed her voice as a lyric soprano. She became widely known as a concert and oratorio singer; she was also a pleasing interpreter of operatic arias and particularly of Welsh songs, including folk-songs. During World War I she toured extensively with Clara Butt. At the 1917 national eisteddfod at Birkenhead she had been invited to sing the Chairing Song, and when it was announced that the winner of the chair (Ellis H. Evans, ' Hedd Wyn ', had been killed in battle, she sang ' I Blas Gogerddan ', which was particularly appropriate. Sixteen years later, at the Wrexham national eisteddfod, she sang the Chairing Song again, and received the unusual distinction of an encore. She was the first of all Welsh artists to broadcast from Savoy Hill. She visited the United States of America on a concert tour in 1926, and returned to Wales from London in 1940 to live at Colwyn Bay, where she taught singing till her death there on 5 October, 1944. She was buried at Henllan. She had married, in 1905, R.T. Williams, and she was survived by a daughter and a son.

Author

Published date: 2001

Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/

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