William Fitzsimmons

Bio

William Fitzsimmons, born in Pennsylvania in 1978, is considered without doubt one of the most intense singer-songwriters. He is often compared to Iron&Wine, Sufjan Stevens, and Elliot Smith for his way of making music.

Born from blind parents, Fitzsimmons grew in a house full of sounds that substituted everything the eyes could not see. His adolescence was full of different musical influences, from his father’s orchestral albums to his mother’s folk records of Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, and Simon & Garfunkel.

Multi-instrumentalist – he plays the organ, guitar, banjo, ukulele, and mandolin- William began his musical career after a counseling degree at Geneva College and after a period of work as a psychiatrist.

He recorded and produced his first two albums at home: respectively Goodnight (2006), created after his parents’ divorce, and The Sparrow and The Crow (2008) which in turn was born after William’s own divorce.

In the following years, Fitzsimmons started being noticed for his collaborations during the tours of artists such as Ingrid Michaelson, Brooke Fraser, and Cary Brothers, as well as the presence of some of his songs on tv series like Grey’s Anatomy and Dollhouse. In 2011, William published Gold in The Shadow, followed by a promotional tour and by Lions in 2014. This album is a manifesto of Fitzsimmons’s musical production: a record in which folk sounds blended with a soft-rock approach creates intimate and almost whispered songs.

William continued his career with two following albums Pittsburgh (2015) e Charleroi: Pittsburgh, Vol.2 (2016), both a portrait of his own family. The songwriter said about the second record: «Charleroi is the second half of the story told in Pittsburgh. The latter is about the grandmother that I have known, Charleroi is about the one I haven’t».

In 2016, Fitzsimmons started an international tour and performed in Italy during Villa Arconati Festival in Bollate (MI).

Again in 2016, William published his first live album William Fitzsimmons Live, a collection of recordings of his live performances, among which the cover of “Everywhere” by Fleetwood Mac rearranged with the help of Abby Gundersen’s violins and voice, Jake Philips’s guitars and Adam Popick’s percussions.

Fitzsimmons’s latest album was Mission Bell, published in 2018. The record is a collection of intimate and empathic songs which described the divorce from his second wife thanks to a mix of acoustic sounds, synth, electronic sonorities, and violins.

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