Dr. W. Hazaiah Williams Annual Recognition

Dr. W. Hazaiah Williams (May 14, 1930 – April 24, 1999)

The W. Hazaiah Williams Founders Concert presented annually by Four Seasons Arts is included in the thousands of performances now silenced.  The soloist to be featured was American violinist Randall  Goosby: https://youtu.be/aJSVT-T1-Xc?list=RDaJSVT-T1-Xc

Dedicated to the racial and cultural integration and expansion of classical music audiences and the concert stage, Dr. Williams began presenting concerts by co-sponsoring a recital by Marian Anderson at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House in 1958.  He founded and directed Today’s Artists Concerts, bringing to the Bay Area hundreds of artists from around the world. For twenty-two years, he presented a series of concerts in New York’s Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall.  In 1981, he established the annual Yachats (Oregon) Music Festival, and in 1993, he created Four Seasons Arts, serving as President and Artistic Director.

Dr. Williams believed, at its best, that Art creates images of beauty that enrich and ennoble as they inspire people to achieve the highest and best in the human experience.  Music is a vehicle through which he pursued his vision that race, class, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and language are artificial barriers preventing the human family from recognizing their enduring commonality.