James MacMillan is one of today’s most successful living composers and is also internationally active as a conductor. His musical language is flooded with influences from his Scottish heritage, Catholic faith, social conscience and close connection with Celtic folk music, blended with influences from Far Eastern, Scandinavian and Eastern European music.
MacMillan first became internationally recognised after the extraordinary success of The Confession of Isobel Gowdie at the BBC Proms in 1990. His prolific output has since been performed and broadcast around the world, placing him in the front rank of today’s composers. His major works include percussion concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, which has received more than 400 performances, a cello concerto for Mstislav Rostropovich, large scale choral-orchestral work Quickening, and three symphonies. Recent major works include his St John Passion, co-commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Boston Symphony and Rundfunkchor Berlin, and his Violin Concerto, co-commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Concertgebouw Zaterdag Matinee and the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris. The 2010/11 season presents several MacMillan world premieres, including his Piano Concerto No.3, Mysteries of Light for the Minnesota Orchestra with Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Osmo Vänskä, a trumpet concertino Seraph for Alison Balsom and the Scottish Ensemble at the Wigmore Hall, a chamber opera Clemency with Britten Sinfonia at the Royal Opera House, and the US premiere of his Violin Concerto with Vadim Repin and the Philadelphia Orchestra/Dutoit at Carnegie Hall and in Philadelphia.
MacMillan’s music has been the focus of many major festivals and residencies over the years, and he held the position of Affiliate Composer of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra from 1990-2000, and Artistic Director of the Philharmonia Orchestra's Music of Today series from 1992-2002. In January 2005 MacMillan was the focus of a major retrospective in the BBC Symphony’s annual composer weekend at London’s Barbican Centre, where he conducted concerts with both the BBC Philharmonic and BBC Symphony Orchestra. In 2009, MacMillan won the prestigious Ivor Novello Classical Music Award and the British Composer Award for Liturgical Music. During the 2009/10 season, the London Symphony Orchestra presented an ‘Artist Portrait’ on MacMillan which, alongside the world premiere of his Violin Concerto, included him conducting the orchestra in the 2009 City of London Festival, a revival of the St John Passion with Sir Colin Davis, and performances of his trumpet concerto Epiclesis and an education project based on his work for ensemble and orchestra Into the Ferment, both conducted by Kristjan Järvi.
In the 2010/11 season MacMillan begins his term as Principal Guest Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Kamer Filharmonie, following 9 years as Composer/Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic. He has conducted orchestras such as the Baltimore Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Melbourne Symphony, Swedish Chamber Orchestra and last season the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in his St John Passion, a work which MacMillan will conduct this season with the Brussels Philharmonic and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestras. Further conducting highlights of the 2010/11 season include his song cycle Raising Sparks at Carnegie Hall, conducting the Gothenburg Symphony for a programme including his Symphony No. 3, the world premiere performances of his Oboe Concerto with Britten Sinfonia and soloist Nicholas Daniel, and with the Bournemouth Symphony for their Living Tradition series.
James MacMillan has directed many of his own works on disc for Chandos, BIS and BMG; his latest releases include a live recording of his opera The Sacrifice from its premiere performance by the Welsh National Opera in 2007 on Chandos, a BIS disc of Sun-Dogs and Visitatio Sepulchri with the Netherland Radio Kamier Filharmonie and Choir, and an LSO Live disc of his St John Passion with the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Colin Davis. Upcoming releases include a disc featuring MacMillan’s A Deep but Dazzling Darkness and his percussion concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel with Colin Currie and the Netherlands Radio Kamer Filharmonie.
MacMillan was awarded a CBE in January 2004.
James MacMillan is represented by Intermusica. www.intermusica.co.uk/macmillan.
The works of James MacMillan are published by Boosey & Hawkes. For a composing biography, please visit the Boosey & Hawkes website.
2010/11 season / 652 words. Not to be altered without permission. Please destroy all previous biographical material.
Sample conducting programmes
Key repertoire to place alongside MacMillan’s music includes: Britten, Stravinsky, Mendelssohn, Vaughan Williams, Shostakovich, Arvo Part, Kancheli, Messiaen, Prokofiev, Sibelius.
Grafenegg Festival, Tonkunstler Orchestra, September 2012
BRITTEN Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, Op.33a
MACMILLAN Credo
MACMILLAN The Sacrifice: Three Interludes
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Symphony No.4
Vienna Radio Symphony (Wien Modern), November 2011
HOWARD Solar
BIRTWISTLE An Imaginary Landscape
RESCH Schlieren
HOWARD New work
CERHA Like a tragicomedy
London Symphony Orchestra, July 2009
MENDELSSOHN Overture The Hebrides Op.26 'Fingal's Cave'
MACMILLAN A meditation on Iona
MACMILLAN From Ayrshire
TCHAIKOVSKY Souvenir d'un lieu cher
MACMILLAN Tryst
Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, March 2010
MACMILLAN St John Passion
Munich Philharmonic, December 2007
GABRIELI Canzonas
BRITTEN Violin Concerto
MACMILLAN Symphony No.1
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, April 2007
BRITTEN Four Sea Interludes
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Symphony No.4
MACMILLAN Quickening
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, March 2011
MACMILLAN: The Sacrifice - Three Interludes
WALTON: Viola Concerto
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis
MACMILLAN: The Confession of Isobel Gowdie
Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonie, January 2009
BRITTEN Prelude & Fugue Op.29
SHOSTAKOVICH Cello Concerto No.1
MACMILLAN Seven Last Words from the Cross
The Florida Orchestra, November 2009
MACMILLAN The Sacrifice: Three Interludes
MENDELSSOHN Violin Concerto
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Symphony No.4
Britten Sinfonia, October 2010
SHOSTAKOVICH Chamber Symphony in C minor, Op.110a (arr Barshai)
MACMILLAN Oboe Concerto (World Premiere)
BEETHOVEN Symphony No.2
BBC Philharmonic, February 2008
MESSIAEN Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum
MACMILLAN The Sacrifice: Three Interludes
KANCHELI Symphony No.5
Rotterdam Philharmonic, February 2009
BENNETT Diversions
MAXWELL DAVIES Temenos
MACMILLAN Symphony No.3 'Silence'
Royal Flemish Philharmonic, November 2008
STRAVINSKY Concerto in D
MACMILLAN Veni, Veni, Emmanuel
STRAVINSKY Variations: Aldous Huxley In Memoriam
MACMILLAN The Berserking
RTE National Symphony Orchestra, May 2008
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis
ADES Violin Concerto
HOLST The Planets
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, April 2008
MACMILLAN Stomp
MACMILLAN Piano Concerto No.2
BEETHOVEN Symphony No.2
Britten Sinfonia, November 2004
BRITTEN Prelude & Fugue
MACMILLAN Piano Concerto No.2
ARVO PÄRT Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten
BARTOK Music for Strings, Percussion & Celeste
BBC Philharmonic, February 2008
KALEVI AHO Rejoicing of deep waters
KALEVI AHO Double Cello Concerto
KALEVI AHO Symphony No.10
BBC Philharmonic, May 2003
BIRTWISTLE Cry of Anubis (Tuba concerto)
BIRTWISTLE Exody
BIRTWISTLE Bach Measures
BBC Philharmonic, October 2004
MAGNUS LINDBERG Parada
MAGNUS LINDBERG Clarinet Concerto
MAGNUS LINDBERG Concerto for Orchestra
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Worklist highlights
Tryst (1989) 30’
Chamber Orchestra
The Confession of Isobel Gowdie (1990) 26’
Symphony Orchestra
Veni, Veni, Emmanuel (1992) 28’
Percussion concerto - solo percussion and chamber / symphony orchestra
Seven Last Words from the Cross (1992) 46’
Cantata for choir and strings
The World’s Ransoming (1996) 20’
Cor anglais concerto - solo cor anglais and symphony orchestra
Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis (2000) 20’
Chorus with organ or symphony orchestra
A Deep but Dazzling Darkness (2002) 22’
Solo violin and ensemble (20 musicians), tape
Symphony No.3 ‘Silence’ (2002) 37’
Symphony orchestra
The Sacrifice: Three Interludes (2006) 15’
Symphony orchestra
St John Passion (2007) 87’
Solo baritone, chorus and orchestra
Violin Concerto (2009) 25'
Solo violin and symphony orchestra
Piano Concerto No.3 (2007-8) 25'
Solo piano and symphony orchestra
Seraph (2010) 15’
For trumpet and string orchestra
Oboe Concerto (2009-10) 23’
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Jean-Yves Thibaudet premieres MacMillan’s Piano Concerto No.3, The Mysteries of Light, with the Minnesota Orchestra under Osmo Vänska
“This exhilarating, readily accessible new work...should encourage other blazing performances. Given virtuoso pianists like Thibaudet, conductors like Vanska, and orchestras like the Minnesota, the piece should find a niche in the piano-orchestra repertoire – an alternative, perhaps, to the familiar Rachmaninoff and Ravel masterpieces."
American Record Guide, July / August 2011
“The work, all 25 minutes of it, is a wild ride, overflowing with color and incident -- turbulent, incantatory and, at moments, luminous. MacMillan's keyboard writing calls for a dramatist and a poet, and it has both in Jean-Yves Thibaudet, whose playing spans the extremes of forcefulness and delicacy”
Star Tribune, April 2011
“The dazzling and perplexing piece is the highlight of this weekend's concerts featuring pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet. The virtuosic 25-minute work could not have gotten a better premiere. There's no doubt that MacMillan knows his way around an orchestra. His score is a cascade of instrumental coloration. There were times, for instance, when the performance shimmered in a tingling shower of ethereal voices, though the more common sensation was shattering, overlapping sonic clashing.
The concerto also challenges the listener to accept two compositionally distinct voices simultaneously — the solo piano and the orchestra... The piano's voice is often eerily doubled by chimes, vibraphone or other instruments, creating a sonority that is at times tingling. In all, it's a masterfully challenging piece for performers and listeners.”
St Paul Pioneer Press, April 2011
MacMillan’s new chamber opera Clemency premieres at the Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House
“Less is more: in James MacMillan's music, every note counts. And never more so than in Clemency, the Scottish composer's brand-new chamber opera, which packs questions powerful, emotional, philosophical and religious into just 45 minutes. With his regular librettist Michael Symmons Roberts and the director Katie Mitchell, MacMillan has created a terrifically intense, focused and inspired musical work on a thought-provoking parable, updated to the present day.
The characterisation is unfailing: Sarah, sung by the marvellous Janis Kelly, has soaring, palpitating and plunging lines as her emotions are buffeted by fear and elation. Abraham, the full-toned Grant Doyle, is straightforward, humble but tenacious. The "triplets" are heard first in close harmony, almost as if with one voice at three pitches: an otherworldly sound, performed with frightening power by Adam Green, Eamonn Mulhall and Andrew Tortise.
But there's another character: the orchestra – the strings of the Britten Sinfonia, conducted by Clark Rundell. They play as if possessed in instrumental episodes that seem to argue the points, amplify the emotions and ratchet up the tension. These passages structure the score just as the three-part picture-frame structures the staging.”
The Independent, five stars, May 2011
James MacMillan conducts his St John Passion with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
“James MacMillan’s intensely moving and dramatic setting of the St John Passion brings the whole raw, pathetic cruelty of Christ’s execution into stark reality.
Conducted by the composer, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus was joined by the 14-voice Colla Voce Singers and the baritone Christopher Maltman, for whom the work was originally written. Maltman’s raw energy, singing Christus, was dramatic and physical. His is a fine voice, with earthy power and edginess. The power of Tu es Petrus or the aching beauty of the Crucifixus etiam pro nobis – with decorative solos from orchestra principals – were moments which will be treasured in the memory.”
Liverpool Daily Post, April 2011
“MacMillan, who conducted last night’s concert at the Philharmonic Hall, has created a complex jigsaw which uses recognisable forms of liturgical chant, rousing choral interjections and celestial and dramatic orchestration, albeit within a 21st century musical framework. The whole was underpinned by an adrenalin-filled orchestration, performed with calmness and absolute concentration by the Phil, and which included everything from a maelstrom of brass and percussion, to mystical chimes and honeyed strings.”
Liverpool Echo, April 2011
James MacMillan conducts his song cycle Raising Sparks in a concert of his own music at Carnegie Hall
“MacMillan conducted music that was ceaselessly inventive, evocative and penetrating. But the focal point was the Italian mezzo-soprano Christina Zavalloni, whose dramatic delivery and delirious presence turned a compelling composition into a theatrical tour de force.”
The New York Times, 3 March 2011
MacMillan’s Violin Concerto is performed at Carnegie Hall by Vadim Repin and the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Charles Dutoit
“The concerto, a 25-minute work in three movements, adheres loosely to historical conventions of form: a crackling opening movement (“Dance”) is followed with a more lyrical section (“Song”) and a finale filled with exuberant display (“Song and Dance”). The solo part’s torrential flurries and sweetly spun melodies are custom fitted to a virtuoso like Mr. Repin, to whom the work is dedicated. Mr MacMillan’s estimable mastery of orchestral timbre and effect is evident throughout.
Composed in memory of Mr MacMillan’s mother, who died in 2008, the concerto derives its considerable emotive impact from graceful and grotesque elements juxtaposed with a dreamy illogic. A bubbly Scottish reel breaks out at the first movement’s climax. In the second, the winsome solo lines flutter over elegiac oboe, guttural brass and dreamy, tuned percussion; a tender passage for piccolo and piano conjures an Irish folk song.
Audience response was rousing and sustained. Mr. Dutoit provided a sympathetic context for Mr MacMillan’s instrumental brilliance and heart-on-sleeve emotionalism.”
The New York Times, 3 March 2011
“The Violin Concerto is a big piece, with bold gestures and virtuosic flights. It can be as showy as a concerto from the 19th-century, and Repin confronted its challenges enthusiastically in a performance characterized by shining tone, precise intonation and impeccable technique...
The Violin Concerto makes for exhilarating and absorbing listening.”
The Classical Review, 2 March 2011
James MacMillan conducts the Britten Sinfonia and Nick Daniel in the world premiere performances of his Oboe Concerto
“Wonderfully virtuosic, superbly crafted for both solo instrument and orchestra and with enough enigmas and sardonic outbursts to keep posterity guessing, James MacMillan’s new Oboe Concerto is a corker. ... the Oboe Concerto starts with deceptive exuberance: after a syncopated minimalist riff in the violas, the oboe is off on a wild dance that manages to veer from exotic arabesques to a lush, even romantic lyricism without breaking stride.”
The Times, 17 October 2010
“Nicholas Daniel then performed MacMillan's new oboe concerto, written for this renowned soloist who is also a player in the Britten Sinfonia. In the opening "Marcato e ritmico", Daniel burst forth as if detonated, with powerful chromatic flurries and a propulsive amalgam of martial and Gaelic energy, strings trilling, glissando-ing and arpeggio-ing beneath him in multiple layers. Parallel worlds of soloist and ensemble at once meet and spin off on their own, not in combat but in dialogue.
In the slow movement, the wide, almost placid and murky sostenuto writing was like a dark lake out of which the oboe rose, keening and plaintive, as if a lone water bird. There is no programme to this piece, so such a suggestion should not be taken literally, only as an attempt to convey the relationship between soloist and ensemble. The finale, harsh, joky and elegiac, had the virtuosic Daniel forcing all his power and might through that tiny reed fit to burst. MacMillan's concerto offers a fiery addition to the solo oboe's confined repertoire.”
The Observer, Sunday 24 October 2010
James MacMillan conducts the Netherlands Radio Kamer Philharmonie in a recording of his Visitatio Sepulchri and Sun Dogs on BIS
“The composer’s intense conducting adds greatly to the impact of an extended piece in three scenes... Altogether a fine coupling of two superb works, a credit to the performers.”
Gramophone, August 2010
World premiere of MacMillan’s Violin Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra, Vadim Repin and Valery Gergiev
“This action-packed crowd-pleaser is essentially a compendium of song and dance digging deep into the primitivism of the distant past to unlock memories much closer to the present. There are dizzying, spinning reels, dirges and sentimental plaints with the violin often hauntingly evoking the "vocal" melismas of Celtic folk singers. One moment the fiddler is urging the entire string section to shake a leg, the next he's in blissful repose with piano and piping piccolo lending a tearful consonance. Wild and wacky, dark and subversive, even brutal – what isn't in the mix? The audience adored it.”
The Independent, May 2010
“The Concerto is written in memory of MacMillan's late mother, and at its centre is a reminiscence of childhood in which Repin picks out the shapes of Celtic folk songs that eventually coalesce into a heart-on-sleeve melody of striking elegance. The opening movement examines the violin's role in dance bands as Repin plays furious Scottish reels in succession. The darker finale juxtaposes swirling violin figurations with both plainchant and a German nursery rhyme declaimed by the orchestral players. Staggeringly difficult, it was a tour de force for Repin, and thrillingly done by Gergiev and the LSO.”
The Guardian, May 2010
“As soloist Vadim Repin and conductor Valery Gergiev whirled us tumultuously through its hyperactive songs and dances, there was so much I wanted to savour, to hear again…
On one level it's a brilliant tour de force which does everything a virtuoso could wish, combining some of the fast, furious, fiddling reels complete with signature drum the bodhrán which are in MacMillan's musical DNA with the necessary chance to let the violin sing - and how, in Repin's dazzling, pitch-perfect performance."
The Arts Desk, May 2010
“Plundering the fiddle tradition of his native Scotland, MacMillan infuses the first movement with jig-like energy and the second with a ruminative-rhapsodic-romantic tune, played in unison by soloist and orchestra before being carried skywards by piccolo (Sharon Williams) in an emotionally stirring vein…the orchestra has plenty of good music to play.
But it’s the solo part that inspires MacMillan to his most original touches…The violin negotiates a series of fiendishly fast and agitated progressions up the scale, creating waves of suppressed tension that are eased by interludes in a yearning vein. The final cadenza is in the finest classical tradition, testing the soloist’s virtuosity and musicianship to the extreme.”
Financial Times, May 2010
MacMillan conducts the Florida Orchestra
“The Florida Orchestra has done an excellent thing by bringing in Scottish composer James MacMillan to conduct not only his own music but also that of Ralph Vaughan Williams, an earlier British master with whom he clearly has a kinship.
MacMillan's Interludes opened the concert with a compact display of his gift for orchestral color, especially in the percussion writing. The way that moments of shimmering delicacy and precision were punctuated by mighty blasts in the brass and percussion reminded me of Shostakovich. The orchestra gave an alert performance for the composer, whose conducting style is clear and energetic.
Part of MacMillan's mission in coming to Florida was to spread the gospel of British music, and he succeeded splendidly on that score with Vaughan Williams' Symphony No.4... Amid the tumult there was a lush loveliness to the music under MacMillan's baton, as in the surprisingly gentle dissonance of the opening theme and the dreamy flute solo that ended the second movement. The frenetic finish left the audience in stunned silence before breaking into applause.”
St. Petersburg Times, Florida, November 2009
MacMillan conducts the Baltimore Symphony
“MacMillan brought obvious authority to the podium and drew some lively playing from the BSO strings in the concerto… The edgy, unpredictable qualities in MacMillan's music helped to reiterate just how edgy and unpredictable Beethoven could be, even in such an early symphony as this one. Every sudden dynamic shift in the latter recalled to mind all the surprises in the former... Beethoven's Second Symphony is particularly rich in potent ideas, as MacMillan illustrated in remarks to the audience before going on to produce a thoughtful, invigorating performance. He offered much more than mere traffic control, emphasizing the work's sinewy power and paying attention to the subtleties that give it so much character. The orchestra jumped into the action with impressive force.”
The Baltimore Sun, April 2008
“For audiences who think they hate modern music, there's nothing to fear here… this music is wild stuff, but it's good, vigorous music and deserves to be performed by major ensembles... A scintillating reading of Beethoven's delightful but infrequently performed Symphony No. 2… The players executed Mr. MacMillan's sunny concept of the work with infectious enthusiasm, particularly in the quirky scherzo and the rousing finale.”
The Washington Times, April 2008
MacMillan conducts the BBC Philharmonic
“A towering performance by the BBC Philharmonic under the composer James MacMillan. He is proving a conductor of daunting ability.”
The Sunday Times, May 2003
“…an orchestral concert delivered with supreme confidence by the BBC Philharmonic under James MacMillan…given a conductor as attuned as MacMillan to large-scale drama as well as to immediacy of impact, and given an orchestra for whom no challenge is too much, the sheer élan of the writing was again hard to resist.”
The Daily Telegraph, October 2004
"It was refreshing to find the BBC Philharmonic and Royal Northern College of Music collaborating on a small festival celebrating the music of the 54-year-old composer Poul Ruders. James Macmillan conducted the BBC Philharmonic, the fleet strings alternately fidgeting restlessly and drawing long, sweeping brush-strokes in music with defined, sculptural textures. Pointed woodwind added such colour that you hardly noticed the absence of percussion."
The Independent, February 2006
“Scotch Bestiary is full of a black vitality which always threatens to explode into pure chaos. ... It’s all brought off with tremendous zest by Wayne Marshall and the BBC Philharmonic under the composer’s direction; but they’re just as much at home in the contemplative, painfully affectionate parts of the Concerto.”
BBC Music Magazine, Proms 2006
“MacMillan himself conducted the BBC Philharmonic for Saturday’s Pickaquoy Centre performance of his own The Confession of Isobel Gowdie. Sixteen years on from the performances that established his name, the composer produced a seamless, swift account of the score.”
The Herald, June 2006
“Composers who turn to conducting aren’t always successful, but James MacMillan is emerging as a strong, assured interpreter of his own music, and the Chandos recordings do him full justice.”
BBC Music Magazine, September 2003
The BBC Symphony Orchestra MacMillan weekend at The Barbican, 2005
“…the great virtue of these marvellous BBC composer weekends [is that] they allow us to roam around a composer’s inner world, and see how it changes over time, and how the elements acquire weight and subtlety. Of course that’s only valuable if the composer in question really has conjured a world worth getting to know, and this weekend made it clear MacMillan is one of the few British composers who have.”
The Daily Telegraph, January 2005
"I wish I knew what James MacMillan eats for breakfast. With 120 compositions already under his belt, the flying Scot is writing music with as much fervour and ingenuity as anyone on the planet. As was amply demonstrated by this BBC weekend devoted to his music, his passion and energy seem inexhaustible... he is, paradoxically, the most powerful voice in British music today - by a mile. Though fused from a thousand diverse sacred and secular influences, his pieces are instantly recognisable, intellectually coherent, fizzing with ideas, gloriously coloured, and without a whiff of pretension or obfuscation. And who knows how his imagination will ripen, darken or deepen in the years ahead. After all, he is only 45."
The Times, January 2005
"The BBC Symphony Chorus crackled with vigour and crisp enunciation: a tribute to their talent and drilling, and MacMillan's early gift for the immediate, dramatic and emotional."
The Times, January 2005
"...[MacMillan's] music has an immense heat and appetite, seizing hold of other musical references and bending them to it's will."
The Daily Telegraph, January 2005
“James MacMillan’s Cantos Sagrados, combining poems concerning political repression in Latin America with liturgical texts in Latin, is surely among the best products of his first flood of inspiration. It is characteristically raw and derivative in places, but also occasionally ravishing, and full of integrity.”
The Independent, January 2006