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 when she was a young child, and her father worked in the printing trade. MacGregor began studying with Christopher Elton at the age of seventeen, and read music at New Hall (now Murray Edwards College, 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.
Between 1997 and 2000, MacGregor was Professor of Music at Gresham College, London, giving free public lectures. She was appointed as Professor of Performance at Liverpool Hope University in 2007.
Repertoire
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. She is also currently performing the complete Mozart concertos and Beethoven sonatas, and performed the complete Chopin Mazurkas to widespread acclaim in 2010. Alongside core piano repertoire, she has premiered many landmark compositions – including piano concertos by Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Django Bates, Hugh Wood, John Adams, Alasdair Nicolson, Jonathan Harvey and James MacMillan – and has commissioned over 100 new works.
Conducting, curating and collaboration
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 Hallé. She 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. In 2009 she opened the London Jazz Festival with Britten Sinfonia and Arabic singer and oud virtuoso Dhafer Youssef, hailed by The Times as 'the future of music'. Their fifteen-year orchestral partnership has continued with tours in Europe and Latin America.
She created (with composer Alasdair Nicolson) the Platform Festival of contemporary and improvised music, which ran at the ICA in London from 1991 until 1993; a series of music events, SoundCircus, ranging from Elvis Costello and Courtney Pine to Ensemble Modern and Steve Reich, at Bridgewater Hall, Manchester (1997–99); a celebration of British contemporary music (featuring Tom Ades) for the New York Philharmonic (1999); and Cross Border with Jin Xing's Contemporary Dance Theatre of Shanghai, combining Chinese traditional music with computer technology and film. Cross Border toured China in 2003.
From 2006 until 2012, 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. She 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 also 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.
In 1990 the BBC broadcast MacGregor's radio play, Memoirs of an Amnesiac, about the life of Erik Satie, with Jim Broadbent. It was nominated for the Prix Italia.
Her series of colourful piano teaching books for children, Piano World, was published in May 2001 by Faber Music. The books feature storytelling, cartoons, games and include companion CDs, with music ranging from classical and jazz to gospel and hip hop. Her short piano piece, Lowside Blues, was chosen for the Associated Board Grade 7 piano exams, and became very popular with young pianists worldwide.
Recent compositions have included Lute Songs (2008) (based on the music of Dowland), and Lost Highway (2010), for piano and orchestra. In 2012 she revived and re-worked, with director Richard Williams, a popular adaption of Mozart's The Magic Flute, for chamber ensemble and seven opera singers. It has toured extensively, and was chosen as her swansong at Bath International Music Festival.
MacGregor broadcasts regularly on television and radio; in 2012 she was the soloist in three BBC Proms, and her performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations was broadcast live from the Albert Hall in 2013. She 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. She also filmed Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier for BBC television, as well as appearing in the Great Composers Series.
In 1998, she launched her own record label SoundCircus in association with John L. Walters' Unknown Public. The label combines new recordings with re-releases of older recordings which MacGregor was able to reclaim after Collins Classics ceased trading. She now owns the copyright to all of her recorded material, and the label is now in partnership with Warner Classical and Jazz.
Discography
Collins Classics:
American Classics (1989) Ives, Copland, Nancarrow, Monk, Garner (originally on LDR)
Britten Piano Concerto (1990) English Chamber Orchestra, Stuart Bedford
Gershwin: Piano Concerto in F, Rhapsody in Blue (original jazz band version) London Symphony Orchestra, Carl Davis
MacGregor on Broadway (1991) Gershwin Songbook, and new pieces by Django Bates, Michael Finnissy, Gary Carpenter, Alasdair Nicolson
Hugh Wood: Piano Concerto, Op. 31 (1992) BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sir Andrew Davis
Bartók/Debussy/Ravel: Piano Works (1993)
Birtwistle: Antiphonies for Piano and Orchestra Radio Filharmonisch Orkest, Michael Gielen (1994)
Bach Six French Suites (1994)
Krauze/Messiaen: Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1994)
Olivier Messiaen Vingt Regards sur L'Enfant Jésus (1995)
Counterpoint: Bach Art of Fugue and works by Conlon Nancarrow (1995)
Sound Circus:
Piano Language SC001, with jazz pianist Nikki Yeoh (1998)
Outside in Pianist SC002, clips and interviews (1998)
Perilous Night SC003: double album of John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes, Perilous Night and Bacchanale, with new work by Deidre Gribbin, Jonathan Harvey, Django Bates and others (1998)
Birtwistle Harrison's Clocks SC004 (2000)
Lou Harrison Piano Concerto SC005, with Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Sian Edwards (2001)
Damba Moon, Ensemble Bash SC006 (2001)
Play (2001), Sound Circus SC007: music includes Bach, Dowland, Piazzolla, Ligeti, Howard Skempton, Somei Satoh
Neural Circuits SC008: music by Messiaen, Schnittke (piano concerto), Arvo Pärt and Nitin Sawhney alongside music based on traditional Ghanaian melodies (2002)
Bach Six French Suites reissue SC901 (2003)
Satie Piano Music reissue SC902 (2003)
Scarlatti Keyboard Sonatas reissue SC903 (2003)
Quiet Music Sound Circus SC904 (2004)
Deep River SC009: Music of the Deep South, with Andy Sheppard (2005)
Sidewalk Dances: music by Moondog, with Andy Sheppard, Kuljit Bhamra, Seb Rochford, Britten Sinfonia SC010 (2006)
Live in Buenos Aires: Bach concertos and music by Piazzolla, Stravinsky and Gismonti, with Britten Sinfonia (2007)
Bach: The Goldberg Variations, recorded in Salzburg's Mozarteum (2008)
Messiaen: Vingt Regards/Quatuor pour la fin du temps/Harawi, with soprano Charlotte Riedijk (2010)
See also reissues on SoundCircus/Warner Classics and Jazz
Concerto repertoire: piano and orchestra
John Adams: Century Rolls
Bach: Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052; Concerto in F minor, BWV 1056
Bartók Concerto No. 3
Django Bates What It's Like To Be Alive
Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat, Op. 19; Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37; Triple Concerto, Op. 56; Concerto No. 4 in G, Op. 58; Concerto No. 5 In E-flat, Op. 73; Choral Fantasy, Op. 80
Berg Chamber Concerto
Birtwistle Antiphonies; Slow Frieze
Brahms Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15
Britten Piano Concerto; Young Apollo; Diversions
Cage Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra
Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue; 2nd Rhapsody; I Got Rhythm Variations; Concerto in F major
Grieg Concerto in A minor Op. 16
Lou Harrison Concerto for Piano and Selected Orchestra
Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43
Ravel Piano Concerto for the Left Hand; Piano Concerto in G
Schnittke Concerto for Piano and Strings
Shostakovich Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and Strings in C minor, Op. 35; Concerto No. 2 in F, Op. 102
Stravinsky Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments
Hugh Wood Piano Concerto
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