WILLIAM RILEY: Biography

William Riley maintains an active schedule as a performer and educator. He currently teaches classical guitar as a member of the applied music faculty at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Mr. Riley has won prizes in several national and international competitions, including first prize in the ECU National Guitar Competition 2000, fourth prize at the 10th International Guitar Competition at the Portland, OR, Guitar Festival, and was chosen as a semi-finalist at the 2001 Guitar Foundation of America International Competition. He has also recorded and premiered several new works for solo guitar, including "Remembrances of Jerusalem" by Israeli composer Lior Navok, for which he was praised as a "fine soloist" by American Record Guide. William Riley holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Texas at Austin, and studied on scholarship with world-renowned guitar virtuoso Eliot Fisk at the New England Conservatory of Music, where he received his Master of Music degree. A frequent recitalist in the New England area in solo and ensemble settings, he also teaches a large studio of young guitarists as director of the Childbloom Guitar Program of Boston.