BIO

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An award-winning producer, arts manager, artistic director, composer/lyricist, and cultural curator, Nolan Williams, Jr. has dedicated his professional career to the curation of works that illuminate issues of civil rights, social justice, and cultural curiosities.

Named the inaugural Social Practice Resident at the Kennedy Center REACH in 2019, Nolan believes in the fundamental power of music and the arts to effect positive change. Over the course of the past 19 years, he has forged his NEWorks Productions into one of the nation's premier creators of inspirational-arts projects, producing educational initiatives, music, cultural festivals, concert events, videos and documentaries, theatrical productions, art exhibitions, community dialogues, and other signature works that reflect the change he seeks in our world.

Altogether, these projects have reached a global audience of nearly 10 million, garnering broad acclaim along the way. 

• STIRRING THE WATERS ACROSS AMERICA, Nolan’s theatrical production that illuminates the Civil Rights Movement for new audiences, was hailed by D.C. Metro Theatre Arts as "electrifying. awakening. ...exquisitely bold and utterly holy." 

• The Williams-directed documentary, Mayor Muriel Bowser presents… “Becoming Douglass Commonwealth,” which chronicles Washington, DC’s long and complicated journey towards statehood, has won two gold prizes for best documentary (Telly Awards, Davey Awards) and seven silver prizes.

• And the celebrated series of citywide cultural festivals Nolan developed from 2013-2018 in partnership with the Mann Center for the Performing Arts—including the Philadelphia Freedom Festival; Liberty: Unplugged; Firebird: Spirit Rising; New Frontiers: Launch, Explore, Discover; and Brilliantly Bernstein: Beyond the Baton—broke new artistic ground for social impact programming in and around the Philadelphia community. 

Nolan is highly regarded as a composer/lyricist who, as The Washington Post’s Peter Marks asserts, "is able to compose convincingly in every popular genre..." Nolan’s versatility is reflected in the songwriting credits he has garnered on two Grammy®-nominated projects; the music he has composed for television, including the original soundtrack for Tavis Smiley’s 2009 documentary, STAND; his Major League Baseball-commissioned arrangement of "The National Anthem" for the 2018 All-Star Game; and, his slate of theatrical productions, including the new musical he has co-written with Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Nikkole Salter, GRACE, winner of eleven 2022 Broadway World D.C. Awards and hailed by The Washington Post as “a rousing, boisterously melodic new musical.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Peter Dobrin adds, "Williams has a musical language all his own. It brims with vernacular American optimism…" This optimism is certainly reflected in Nolan’s choral/orchestral works that have been performed by the Philadelphia, National Symphony, Charleston Symphony, Atlanta Youth Symphony, Philadelphia Youth, Kennedy Center Opera House, and NEWorks Philharmonic Orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra’s world premiere of his song cycle, “Hold Fast To Dreams,” lauded by the Philadelphia Inquirer as “soaring… lovely… [and] dreamily upbeat.”

The list of artists with whom Nolan has collaborated reads like a who’s who of music and entertainment including: Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, Chaka Khan, Gladys Knight, Natalie Cole, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Audra McDonald, Leslie Odom, Jr., Vanessa Williams, Louis Gossett, Jr., Smokie Robinson, Raul Esparza, and Denyce Graves.

Nolan’s versatility is not limited to musical composition, his entire career is marked by diverse and creative invention. Here are a few highlights:

• Curation and co-production of the Kennedy Center’s landmark nine-day festival, Joyful Sounds: Gospel Across America (2010), establishing with the Center a new collaborative paradigm for its festival curation.

• Curation of the WOKE! digital arts civic engagement campaign (2020), anchored by the award-winning voting rights anthem and viral video, “I Have A Right To Vote,” starring Billy Porter, Billy Jean King, Carla Hall, Christopher Jackson, Hill Harper, Ebony JoAnn, Ryan Jamaal Swain and Sheila C. Johnson. To date, the WOKE! campaign has garnered over 3.5 million global views!

• Production of the American Cancer Society’s Partnering for Life concert series from 2010-2012, integrating inspirational performances with key health messaging to increase awareness and cancer screenings in at-risk communities. 

• Revitalization of the National Symphony Orchestra’s NSO in Your Neighborhood (NiYN) initiative with concert programming in 2011 and 2012 that better appealed to D.C. communities east of the river and grassroots marketing that fully engaged those underserved communities. The results: the NSO’s first capacity-filled NiYN community concerts!

• Artistic direction of a U.S. State Department-commissioned cultural envoy of musical artists to Cairo, Egypt for the Fifth Annual Sufi and Chanting Festival (2012), an international festival sponsored by Egypt's Ministry of Culture.

• Co-curation of the Kennedy Center’s 2015-2016 performance series Music: A Force for Mending to explore the themes of racial reconciliation, social justice and equality, featuring programming by the Washington National Opera, NSO, and the Center’s Artistic Advisor for Jazz Jason Moran, along with original programming produced by NEWorks.

• Curation of West Side/South Side, a touring photographic exhibition that explored the challenges and triumphs of American diversity, featuring daring new works by student photographers attending five collegiate media schools. This 2018 exhibition commemorated the centenary of American composer Leonard Bernstein and was mounted over a three-month period in major gallery spaces in Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C.

• Conceptualization of the 2002 “Freedom” exhibition, a celebration of African American history and heritage from emancipation to the end of the 20th century. Produced in collaboration with Walls Communications, this project was adopted by the U.S. Army and toured throughout the nation over a five-year period, including mountings at the Essence Music Festival and the NAACP Image Awards. And... Nolan's concept still serves as inspiration for the U.S. Army’s present-day exhibition highlighting Blacks in the armed services. 

• Chief music editor of the bestselling African American Heritage Hymnal, a groundbreaking compendium of sacred music from the Black Church experience published in 2001 and lauded as perhaps “the most important addition to Protestant hymnody within the last century.” (Over 500,000 books sold worldwide to date.)  

There is little wonder why Nolan and the projects he has produced have garnered a staggering 25 prizes in just the past two years (2021-23), including twelve Telly Awards, 11 Broadway World Washington, D.C. Awards, two Davey Awards, one Anthem Award, and a CAAPA Legacy Award. He is also the recipient of the Kennedy Center's National Committee for the Performing Arts’ 2019 Award for Arts Advocacy and an honorary doctorate of music from Richmond Virginia Seminary.

A resident of Washington, D.C., Nolan serves as chair of the Center's Community Advisory Board and is artistic director of three performance ensembles: the NEWorks Philharmonic Orchestra, NEWorks Voices of America, and NEWorks Voices of Inspiration.