EN EVENING WITH PROF JOANNA MACGREGOR. PROF JOANNA MACGREGOR IN CONVERSATION WITH SAVILIAN DAVID OLDROYD-BOLT.

Over the course of this evening, Professor MacGregor will discuss the life of a concert pianist, from preparing a piece for performance and points of interpretation to the difficulties and delights of performing and how to play with an orchestra. Professor MacGregor will demonstrate from the keyboard throughout the evening.

Described as ‘a brilliant light in the music world,’ Joanna MacGregor CBE is one of the world’s most innovative musicians, appearing as a concert pianist, curator and conductor. As a solo pianist she has appeared with leading orchestras, performing in over eighty countries, with eminent conductors including Pierre Boulez, Colin Davis, Simon Rattle and Michael Tilson Thomas.

Joanna is Dame Myra Hess Chair of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music and runs two annual piano festivals for young musicians; she has been Artistic Director of Dartington International Summer School, Bath International Festival, and Deloitte Ignite at the Royal Opera House,

 as well as a curator for festivals around the world.

In 2020 Joanna performed Beethoven’s thirty-piano sonatas as part of Beethoven’s 250th celebrations and will give an immersive series of Schubert’s piano music in October 2023.

She has released over forty solo recordings – many of them on her own award-winning record label SoundCircus – ranging from Chopin and Piazzolla to Bach and John Cage. Joanna has commissioned and premiered many landmark works, and is a regular broadcaster on TV and radio, appearing many times at the BBC Proms.

Her collaborative and composition projects encompass jazz, film, visual art, contemporary dance and electronica, with artists including Brian Eno, Nitin Sawhney, Andy Sheppard and Wayne McGregor. From 2015-2021 she chaired the Paul Hamlyn Composers Awards and has been a Booker Prize Judge. Joanna MacGregor has five honorary doctorates in music; a regular conductor, she is Music Director of Brighton Philharmonic as it approaches its centenary. Her bestselling series of books for children, PianoWorld, is hailed as ‘a new series for the Millenium.’