Eugene Takeuchi-Williams
For someone who was raised in a classical environment, Eugene Takeuchi-Williams has had an unlikely relationship with art music. Son of the composer Adrian Williams, Eugene was taught to play the piano by his father, who also helped him to hone his musical instincts in his early years. During his time attending secondary school in Tokyo, he stopped playing the piano and tried to develop a broader musical taste of his own accord. He first focused his time on Hip-Hop music, then Rock and Jazz, learning of their respective histories. Realising that it was the most experimental variants of these genres that stimulated him most, it soon led him to explore and love the music of Mahler, as well as Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Berg. Since then, he has started to play the piano again, performing Rach 2 with his school orchestra in 2018. His predisposition for innovation in music has led him to hear Bach, Beethoven and other standard 'greats' in a new light. He also continues to be interested in modernist and contemporary composers.
Personal favourites include: Bach, Beethoven, (some) Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg, Sibelius, Elgar, Britten, (some) Boulez, Messiaen, Dutilleux, (some) Prokofiev, (some) Scriabin, Ives, Carter and Takemitsu.
Eugene is now an undergraduate at Durham University, reading Philosophy. Music listening still takes up a significant portion of his time. Whilst he plans to pursue a career in academia, he also hopes that some of his philosophy can be written in service of music - hence his continuing interest in philosophical aesthetics. He is interested in questions regarding the ontology of music, and aesthetic judgements or 'taste'.