Nicholas Williams

Availability

Nicholas is available at Mount Lawley campus or via teleconference each Wednesday from 10am until 2pm.

Top 3 Skills

• Historical and archival research
• Media and design software
• Presentations (Conference papers, non-academic communication)

Training areas

Nicholas provides support from his own experience with:

• Academic writing (proposal and thesis writing, literature reviews)
• Communicating your research to non-academic audiences
• Historical research tools and methods (Zotero, archival research)
• Referencing (Chicago, Zotero, EndNote)
• Presentation (Public speaking)

Nicholas also offers support in the following areas:

• MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
• Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Premiere, InDesign, Illustrator, Audition)
• Music notation software (MuseScore, Sibelius)
• General IT troubleshooting
• Social media profiles (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube)
• Confirmation of Candidature process (GRIP, Epigeum, REMS, Riskware, Turnitin)
• CV, resume, and job applications
• Time management strategies

Research area

Nicholas is a PhD candidate at WAAPA, researching the life and work of the great pianist Arthur Friedheim (1859-1932). Highly revered in his day for his phenomenal musical gifts, Friedheim successfully toured Europe and America for almost three decades, playing before queens and presidents. Friedheim saw his fame suddenly evaporate when, with the outbreak of war in Europe, he was forced to set up a new life in America—and his German name made him the object of harsh xenophobia. Friedheim’s career never fully recovered from this setback, and he died in relative obscurity. His posthumous reception, based on a few poor-quality records, has been unfavourable at best. Nicholas’ research hopes to re-evaluate Friedheim’s piano-playing, particularly from the perspective of the legacy he left regarding his studies with Franz Liszt (1811-1886), one of the most important composers and pianists of the nineteenth century. Friedheim, who saw himself as one of the few custodians of a “Lisztian tradition” of piano-playing, wrote several important accounts of Liszt’s teaching and approach to the piano, representing an invaluable contribution to the world of piano-playing, which to-date has remained widely neglected.

Background

Nicholas Williams is a pianist and writer passionate about the music, pianos and performance styles of the nineteenth century. He studied at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), completing a Master of Arts (Performing Arts) in 2020, and was recipient of the Royal Overseas League Early Keyboard Prize in 2021. Active as both soloist and accompanist, Nicholas regularly performs in concerts around Perth, and has presented lecture-recitals nationally and internationally: in 2019 in Vienna, Austria as part of a symposium convened by the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and in 2022 at the Global Piano Roll Meeting at the Hochschule der Künste in Bern, Switzerland. As a researcher, Nicholas is interested in the piano-playing of the late-nineteenth century, with a particular focus on Franz Liszt and his pupils. He is currently a PhD candidate and sessional piano teacher at WAAPA.