23 Facts About Joanna MacGregor

Joanna Clare MacGregor was born on 16 July 1959 and is a British concert pianist, conductor, composer, and festival curator.

Joanna MacGregor is Head of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music and a professor of the University of London.

Joanna MacGregor's mother is a piano teacher and taught her when she was a young child, and her father worked in the printing trade.

Joanna MacGregor began studying with Christopher Elton at the age of seventeen, and read music at New Hall where she was taught composition by Hugh Wood.

Joanna MacGregor became Head of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music in 2011.

Between 1997 and 2000, Joanna MacGregor was Professor of Music at Gresham College, London, giving free public lectures.

Joanna MacGregor was appointed as Professor of Performance at Liverpool Hope University in 2007.

Joanna MacGregor is particularly known for her Bach interpretations and recordings, and was invited by Sir John Eliot Gardiner to perform the Goldberg Variations at the Royal Albert Hall in April 2013.

Joanna MacGregor is currently performing the complete Mozart concertos and Beethoven sonatas, and performed the complete Chopin Mazurkas to widespread acclaim in 2010.

Joanna MacGregor made her conducting debut in 2002 and regularly directs her own orchestral projects, including an all-Mozart programme with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Bach with the Halle.

Joanna MacGregor enjoys a close artistic partnership as conductor and performer with Britten Sinfonia, in programmes ranging from classical music to collaborations with jazz and world musicians, including Andy Sheppard, Seb Rochford, Nitin Sawhney and Arve Henriksen.

From 2006 until 2012, Joanna MacGregor was the Artistic Director of the Bath International Music Festival, where alongside many classical artists, ensembles and orchestras, she commissioned Brian Eno, the writer and cultural historian Marina Warner, jazz and electronica artists, folk musician Kathryn Tickell, and poets Roger McGough and Michael Rosen.

Joanna MacGregor instigated Party in the City, a massive, free event which takes over the whole city of Bath on the first Friday of the Festival; she created the annual installation On the Edge of Life, bringing together visual artists, scientists, writers and musicians examining issues as diverse as premature birth, homelessness and child human rights.

Joanna MacGregor was the subject of an edition of The South Bank Show in December 2001 and presented her own series Strings, Bows, and Bellows for BBC television.

Joanna MacGregor filmed Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier for BBC television, as well as appearing in the Great Composers Series.

Joanna MacGregor has received honorary Fellowships from the Royal Academy of Music, Trinity College of Music, and Murray Edwards, Cambridge.

Joanna MacGregor has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from the University of St Andrews, the Open University, the University of Bath and Bath Spa University.

Joanna 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.

Joanna MacGregor was recognised for her innovation with a Royal Philharmonic Society award in 2003 for imaginative programming and tireless work in opening up music to new audiences.

Joanna MacGregor was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2012 Birthday Honours and Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2019 Birthday Honours, both for services to music.

Between 1990 and 1995, Joanna MacGregor made more than 15 solo recordings with Collins Classics, ranging from Bach and Domenico Scarlatti to music by Ravel, Debussy, Ives, Bartok and Messiaen, as well as contemporary music.

The label combines new recordings with re-releases of older recordings which Joanna MacGregor was able to reclaim after Collins Classics ceased trading.

Joanna MacGregor now owns the copyright to all of her recorded material, and the label is in partnership with Warner Classical and Jazz.