Biographical Info

Joanna MacGregor CBE is one of the world’s most innovative musicians, appearing as a concert pianist, conductor, curator and teacher. As Dame Myra Hess Chair of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music and Professor of University of London, she is Head of an international piano department of young pianists from all over the world, many of whom have gone on to great success in major competitions like the Van Cliburn, Leeds and Sydney International Piano Competitions, as well as international careers. She also runs two annual Piano Festivals at the Royal Academy of Music, and curates a year-round recital series at the Wigmore Hall for Academy pianists.

As a solo artist Joanna has performed in over eighty countries and appeared with many eminent conductors – Pierre Boulez, Sir Colin Davis, Ilan Volkov, Sir Simon Rattle and Michael Tilson Thomas amongst them – and orchestras, including the London Symphony and Sydney Symphony orchestras, Chicago, Melbourne and Oslo Philharmonic orchestras, Berlin Symphony Orchestra and Salzburg Camerata. She has premiered many landmark compositions, and performs regularly at major venues throughout the world, including Wigmore Hall, Southbank Centre and Barbican Centre in London, Sydney Opera House, Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Mozarteum in Salzburg.

Joanna MacGregor has been the Artistic Director of Dartington Summer School and Bath International Music Festival, and curated the multi-arts Deloitte Ignite Festival at the Royal Opera House, as well as Aventures+, an orchestral series for Luxembourg Philharmonie.  She made her conducting debut in 2002 and has directed concerts with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Liverpool Philharmonic, Britten Sinfonia, Manchester Camerata and the Hallé. Joanna is the Music Director of the Brighton Philharmonic, and creates and conducts large-scale symphonic programmes as it approaches its centenary.

Joanna is a regular broadcaster on TV and radio, making numerous appearances at the BBC Proms. Known for her interpretations of Bach, she was invited by Sir John Eliot Gardner to perform the Goldberg Variations at the Royal Albert Hall, broadcast live. Amongst the many artists with whom she has collaborated are the soprano Carolyn Sampson, cellist Adrian Brendel, folk artist Kathryn Tickell, Brian Eno, and the writer Marina Warner. She was recently seen on BBC’s recent Civilisations series with the Wayne McGregor Dance Company. As a recording artist Joanna is a veteran of over forty solo recordings, ranging from Bach and Scarlatti to jazz and John Cage. Her own record label SoundCircus was founded in 1998 and has released many highly successful recordings, including the complete Chopin Mazurkas, the Mercury Prize-nominated Play, Bach’s Goldberg Variations (recorded at the Mozarteum in Salzburg) and Live in Buenos Aires with the Britten Sinfonia.

Joanna MacGregor was awarded a CBE for services to music in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2019 and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Cambridge. She has received four more Honorary Doctorates from Bath University, Bath Spa University, Open University and St Andrew’s, as well as Fellowships from the Royal Academy of Music, Trinity College of Music and Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, and a Visiting Musician at Oriel College Oxford. She makes regular appearances on television and was the subject of a South Bank Show; from 2014-2021 she chaired the Paul Hamlyn Composers Awards and has been a Booker Prize Judge. Her ongoing series of music books, PianoWorld, has been hailed as ‘a new series for the Millennium’.