Willie Williams (set designer)

rdf:langString Willie Williams (set designer)

rdf:langString William Peter Charles Williams (born 1959) is a show director, stage & lighting designer and video director for concerts, theatre, and multimedia projects. He is best known for his groundbreaking work with the rock band U2, and is recognised as one of the leading artists in this field. William Gibson, writing in Wired magazine, said “Willie Williams combines a passionate delight in technology with an infectious low-tech joy. His innovations have become industry standards.” He was born in 1959 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and raised in Sheffield, England, son of Robert Woodman Williams, a singer & medical practitioner who was an early pioneer in the then fledgling field of physiotherapy and who also sang with South Yorkshire Opera. Williams excelled at mathematics and science in school and planned to study physics at University College, London. The advent of punk rock caused him to enter the music scene instead, and he began doing lights for various bands such as Writz, Deaf School and Stiff Little Fingers. Willie Williams has been responsible for the design of U2's tours from 1982 onward, most famously the extravagant, bewildering Zoo TV Tour (1992–93), and most recently the Innocence + Experience Tour (2015), the Joshua Tree Tours 2017 and 2019, and the Experience + Innocence Tour (2018). He has also worked with musical artists such as R.E.M., David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Robbie Williams, Darren Hayes, George Michael and Self Esteem. Williams has designed for the Montreal-based dance company La La La Human Steps. Other collaborations have been with Laurie Anderson, Marianne Faithfull and the Kronos Quartet, most notably on Sun Rings, a joint effort with NASA that combines the string quartet's music with video and audio material collected by the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft.