Welsh classical soprano Ellen Williams releases a new light classical cover of Sting’s beautiful song “Fields of Gold”. Inspired by the well-known rendition by singer-songwriter Eva Cassidy, Ellen’s rendition is honest and romantic, and opens out from a simple piano introduction to a luscious orchestral and filmic soundscape with dramatic brass and percussion. Sting wrote the song after buying a house near a barley field, where the sunsets and colours of the field helped inspire the lyrics, along with his love for his wife Trudy. It is therefore fitting that Ellen released this track on the 11th of February, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

Ellen comments: I grew up listening to this song, possibly having heard it more often by Eva Cassidy, and I just love how honest the lyrics are combined with the simple melody. It’s almost folk-like, like the many Welsh folk songs I grew up singing, taught to me by my grandmother. In Sting’s book, he wrote that their house “is surrounded by barley fields, and in the summer it’s fascinating to watch the wind moving over the shimmering surface, like waves on an ocean of gold... Lovers have made promises here, I’m sure, their bonds strengthened by the comforting cycle of the seasons”. It was helpful to keep this in mind whilst recording the song, it really is very moving, all about the different stages of a relationship.”

Ellen grew up with music in the family, her grandmother was always singing Welsh hymns and folk songs to her, and her mother is an international harpist. Ellen’s debut single ‘Dancing with the Angels’, a new arrangement of beautiful Welsh Lullaby Suo Gân, which featured in Spielberg’s ‘Empire of the Sun’, went straight to No 1 in the UK Classical Charts and since then Ellen has released an EP of film-score greats all given a classical flare, and a 12 track Christmas album. Ellen has come a long way since her first Saturday job singing the songs of Wales to tourists in medieval banquets in Cardiff Castle, and has been praised for her “poise and promise, her voice agile with silvery charm” (The Guardian), and described as singing “with heart-piercing sweetness” in The Times. Ellen was delighted to be asked to sing during the wedding ceremony of Sir Bryn Terfel, has sung under the baton of Sir Karl Jenkins, and has performed to audiences internationally in the USA and in many of the UK’s most prestigious concert venues including the Royal Albert Hall, Buckingham Palace for HRH The Prince of Wales, Cadogan Hall, Royal Concert Hall Glasgow, Bridgewater Hall, the Wales Millennium Centre and St. David’s Hall with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.