Born: April 8, 1931 - Chilliwack, near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
The Canadian bass-baritone, William Reimer, grew up in Yarrow, BC, and studied voice at the Mennonite Brethren Bible College in Winnipeg. At the 1960 Vancouver International Festival he sang Noye in Benjamin Britten's Noye's Fludde. He enrolled at the Music Academy in Detmold, Germany, in 1961 and graduated in 1964. In 1966 he began teaching at the State School of Music in Hannover.
William Reimer's voice is particularly suited to Lieder and oratorio. He has performed with the Vancouver and Winnipeg CBC orchestras and with the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. In 1985 he was the baritone soloist in the Mennonite Festival Chorus performance of Johannes Brahms' German Requiem conducted by Robert Shaw with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. He is soloist in the Philips European recordings of J.S. Bach's Missae breves (BWV 235-236) (1970) and Cantatas BWV 74 and BWV 147 (1972) and Georg Philipp Telemann's Frühlingskantate (1970), Trauerkantate (1970), and Mutzenbecherkantate (1970). He also sings on an album of Christmas music, In Dulci Jubilo (1969, Fontana), and on an album of works by Wolfgang Fortner (1973, PolyGram). In 1990-1991 he toured Hungary as baritone soloist in Dvořák's Stabat Mater and Germany in Penderecki's Dies Irae. |