Joanna MacGregor

Joanna MacGregor OBE (born 16 July 1959) is a British concert pianist, conductor, composer and festival curator. She is Head of Piano at The Royal Academy of Music and a Professor of London University. MacGregor grew up in North London, and was educated at home, with her brother and sister, by her parents; she won a free place to South Hampstead High School at the age of 11. Her mother is a piano teacher and taught her as a little girl, and her father worked in the printing trade. Joanna began studying with Christopher Elton at the age of seventeen, and read music at New Hall, University of Cambridge (1978–81) where she was taught composition by Hugh Wood. After Cambridge, she pursued postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music. She became Head of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music in 2011. Unusually, in the early years of her performing career, Joanna MacGregor was a prolific composer for the theatre (including Cheek by Jowl, and Oxford Stage Company's production of Hamlet at Elsinore Castle and Edinburgh Festival). She was one of the first artists to be selected for the Young Concert Artists Trust in 1985, and has since performed in over seventy countries, appearing as a solo artist with many of the world's leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Berlin Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonia, Melbourne Symphony and Sydney Symphony Orchestras, Hong Kong Philharmonic, BBC Symphony and Salzburg Camerata. The many eminent conductors with whom she has worked include Pierre Boulez, Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Colin Davis, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Valery Gergiev, and she has appeared in many of the world's greatest venues, including the Wigmore Hall, Southbank Centre and the Barbican in London, Sydney Opera House, New York’s Lincoln Center, Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Between 1997 and 2000, Joanna MacGregor was Professor of Music at Gresham College, London, giving free public lectures. She was made Professor of Performance at Liverpool Hope University in 2007, and has received honorary Fellowships from the Royal Academy of Music, Trinity College of Music, and Murray Edwards, Cambridge (New Hall). She has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from the Open University, the University of Bath and Bath Spa University. MacGregor was appointed as Member of the Arts Council England in 1998 alongside Anish Kapoor, Brian McMaster, Anthony Gormley and Andrew Motion, leaving in 2004. In 2003, she was recognised for her innovation with a Royal Philharmonic Society award for imaginative programming and tireless work in opening up music to new audiences. Other awards include European Encouragement Prize for Music 1995, NFMS Sir Charles Grove Award 1998, and South Bank Show Award for Classical Music 2000. MacGregor was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to music. Joanna MacGregor broadcasts regularly on television and radio; in 2012 she was the soloist in three BBC Proms, and her performance of the Goldberg Variations was broadcast live from the Albert Hall in 2013. She was the subject of The South Bank Show in December 2001 and presented her own series Strings, Bows, and Bellows for BBC television. She also filmed Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier for BBC television, as well as appearing in the Great Composers Series.