John Gilhooly, CBE , OSI (born 15 August 1973, Castleconnell, County Limerick, Ireland) is a British and Irish arts administrator. He is currently artistic and executive director of Wigmore Hall. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Gilhooly was educated at Lisnagry National School, Ardscoil Rís, Limerick. He read history and political science at University College Dublin, from which he graduated in 1994. [2] He then studied singing as a tenor at the Dublin City College of Music and the Leinster School of Music, under the mentorship of Veronica Dunne. [5] [6]
Gilhooly had worked on events and concerts at Harrogate International Centre and at the ExCel Centre in London's Docklands. [7] In 2000, he became executive director of Wigmore Hall, with responsibility for general administration separate from its then-Artistic Director, William Lyne.[ citation needed ]
In 2005, Gilhooly became artistic director of Wigmore Hall in addition to the post of executive director, at age 32 he was then the youngest head of a classical concert venue worldwide. He has also chaired the biennial Wigmore Hall/Independent Opera International Song Competition and the Wigmore Hall String Quartet Competition. In June 2020, under Gilhooly's leadership, Wigmore Hall was the first UK classical music venue to present a live series of streamed chamber music concerts under quarantine conditions in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. [8] [9]
Gilhooly became chairman of the Royal Philharmonic Society in 2010. [2] Gilhooly is also a frequent juror in international competitions, and chaired the BBC Cardiff Singer of The World Song Competition in June 2019. He undertakes a variety of voluntary work in music and the arts and is associated with numerous arts charities. He has served as Chairman of Mahogany Opera Group and holds a number of Honorary Patronages, including Leeds Lieder, The Chopin Society, Irish Heritage and the CAVATINA Chamber Music Trust. He is Patron of the Ina Boyle Society. [10]
He was also Patron of the refurbishment of Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church, Covent Garden. He is a trustee of the International Musicians’ Seminar, Cornwall, a trustee of The Susan Chilcott Scholarship and an advisor to London Music Masters. He is Patron of Wimbledon Music Festival and a freeman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians. He has held advisory roles with Cheltenham Music Festival and the Dartington Trust. He is a former director of the British Association of Concert Halls.[ citation needed ]
Gilhooly was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2013 and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to music. [11]
He has also been awarded the Star of Italy, the German Order of Merit and the Austrian Cross of Honour, and is a Knight in the Order of the White Rose of Finland. He has been granted honorary fellowships of the Royal Academy of Music, the Guildhall School and the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and honorary membership of the Royal College of Music. [12]
In April 2019, the Heidelberger Frühling festival awarded Gilhooly its Heidelberger Frühling Music Award. [13] [14]
In 2016, The Sunday Times listed Gilhooly as one of the 500 most influential people in Britain, specifically as "one of the most influential figures in British arts administration." [15] He has also received the Cobbett Medal for services to Chamber Music from the Worshipful Company of Musicians. He has been listed in The Evening Standard's "London's most influential" list. [16]
In 2021, the Association of British Orchestras (ABO) named Gilhooly its Concert Hall Manager of the Year. [17]
The Irish Chamber Orchestra (ICO) is an Irish classical music ensemble, administratively based at the University of Limerick. János Fürst founded the ICO in 1963. The ICO consisted only of strings as its regular ensemble for many years, adding wind, brass and percussion players on a freelance basis when needed. The ICO was reformed in 1970 under the name of the New Irish Chamber Orchestra and the principal conductorship of André Prieur. The orchestra first toured North America in 1978. In 1995, the orchestra was again reconstituted, reverting to its original name of the Irish Chamber Orchestra.
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010).
Castleconnell is a village in County Limerick on the banks of the River Shannon. It is 11 km (6.8 mi) from Limerick city and near the boundaries of County Clare and County Tipperary.
Nicholas Daniel is a British oboist and conductor. In 2003 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Leicester International Music Festival.
The Wigmore Hall is a concert hall at 36 Wigmore Street, in west London. It was designed by Thomas Edward Collcutt and opened in 1901 as the Bechstein Hall; it is considered to have particularly good acoustics. It specialises in performances of chamber music, early music, vocal music and song recitals, and hosts over five hundred concerts each year, as well as a weekly concert broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
Graham Johnson OBE is a British classical pianist and Lieder accompanist.
The Royal Over-Seas League (ROSL) is a not-for-profit institution founded in 1910, dedicated to promoting international friendship pursuant to its royal charter, an ethos which binds its global membership.
Howard Gordon Shelley is a British pianist and conductor. He was educated at Highgate School and the Royal College of Music. He was married to fellow pianist Hilary Macnamara till her death in 2021, with whom he performed and recorded in a two-piano partnership, and they have two sons.
Simon Holt is an English composer.
Madeleine Louise Mitchell MMus, ARCM, GRSM, FRSA is a British violinist who has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in over forty countries. She has a wide repertoire and is particularly known for commissioning and premiering new works and for promoting British music in concert and on disc.
Ioana Petcu-Colan is an Irish violinist of Romanian origin, currently living in Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland.
Ina Boyle was an Irish composer. Her compositions encompass a broad spectrum of genres and include choral, chamber and orchestral works as well as opera, ballet and vocal music. While a number of her works, including The Magic Harp (1919), Colin Clout (1921), Gaelic Hymns (1923–24), Glencree (1924-27) and Wildgeese (1942), received acknowledgement and first performances, the majority of her compositions remained unpublished and unperformed during her lifetime.
The Eggner Trio is a piano trio from Vienna. The members are three brothers: Georg Eggner (violin), Florian Eggner (cello), and Christoph Eggner (piano). The trio performs and records a range of classical and modern chamber works. It has appeared in such distinguished venues as Wigmore Hall in London and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and in 2003 won the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition.
This is a summary of 2010 in music in the United Kingdom.
The Walter Willson Cobbett Medal is awarded annually by the Worshipful Company of Musicians "in recognition of services to Chamber Music". It was established in 1924 and endowed with £50 by Walter Willson Cobbett (1847–1937), an amateur violinist and expert on chamber music who went on to serve as the company's master in 1928–29. Cobbett had previously instigated the Cobbett Competition for chamber music, and later was the primary author of the two volume Cobbett's Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music, first published in 1929.
The Heidelberger Frühling Music Award is an award given at the music festival Heidelberger Frühling in Heidelberg, Germany. The annually award is endowed with €10,000 and is awarded to creatives and journalists who have made a substantial and sustained contribution to bringing classical music to wider audiences, respectively to individuals who have made substantial and lasting contributions within the classical music education sector. The prize is donated by HeidelbergCement.
Bomsori Kim is a South Korean classical violinist. She performs as a recitalist and as a soloist with leading orchestras and conductors.
Amir Shpilman is an Israeli composer.
This is a summary of the year 2021 in British music.
The Heidelberger Frühling was founded in 1997 as a classical music festival and has since developed into a year-round cultural institution that conceives and organises festivals, concert series and conferences with internationally established performers, ensembles, orchestras and speakers as well as support programmes for young artists. Around 47,700 visitors (2019) are reached at a total of over 120 events per year. Thorsten Schmidt has been the Managing and Artistic Director since 1997. Heidelberger Frühling belongs to the festival region Rhein-Neckar.