William Harvey was named interim concertmaster of the Spokane Symphony soon after graduating from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Ronald Copes. As the winner of Juilliard's concerto competition, he gave the New York premiere of Behzad Ranjbaran's Violin Concerto in Alice Tully Hall, with the Juilliard Orchestra conducted by Gerard Schwarz. Alex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker, hailed that performance as "intense and persuasive." During his last semester at Juilliard, he served as concertmaster of the Juilliard Orchestra for the commencement concert. He played Milton Babbitt's Melismata in a concert honoring the composer's ninetieth birthday.William has performed solo with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and the New World Youth Symphony Orchestra in Basel, Switzerland. He has collaborated with musicians such as Joan Tower, Herbie Hancock, and the Da Capo Chamber Players. In 2003, he toured the West Coast as the second violinist of the Indiana University New Music Ensemble. In 2002, he gave the first performance west of New York City of the Sonata for Solo Violin (1919) by Artur Schnabel. A firm believer in outreach concerts, William famously performed for members of the Fighting Sixty-Ninth regiment on September 16, 2001, as they recuperated from a long day of rescue and clean-up work at Ground Zero. He earned a Bachelor's of Music with highest distinction from Indiana University, where he studied with Ilya Kaler and Mimi Zweig.His 43 compositions have received a total of 96 performances. In 2006, Cuerpo Garrido won Columbia University's Bearns Prize. In 2005, When I Have Fears for soprano and piano premiered at the Wolf Trap Festival in Virginia, with a repeat performance at New York Festival of Song. The Indiana University String Academy commissions him frequently, playing his works for strings all over the mid-western United States, central France, and Japan. His pieces have been performed on national radio (From the Top, NPR) and television (Musical Encounters, PBS). William's composition teachers include Samuel Adler and Sven-David Sandstrom.He founded Music for the People, a non-profit group that promotes international cultural understanding through music. For its first project, William went on a solo violin concert tour of Moldova and Tunisia in summer 2005. In Moldova, he gave concerts promoting UNICEF's Early Childhood Development campaign. In Tunisia, he taught a week of master classes and gave a recital dedicated to all the victims of terrorism on the same day as the London bombings. In 2006, Music for the People offered master classes and outreach concerts in the Philippines and collaborated with the Kuaba Humanitarian Foundation to present music composition workshops for AIDS orphans in Zimbabwe. In recognition of his work with Music for the People, William has received the McGraw-Hill Companies' Robert Sherman Award and the Juilliard School's William Schuman Prize.
