Joanna MacGregor

Joanna MacGregor is one of the most wide-ranging and innovative musicians around, with a career spent connecting genres and defying easy categorisation. She has appeared in over sixty countries, performing with many of the world's great orchestras (including the New York Philharmonic, the London and Sydney Symphony Orchestras, Netherlands Radio, the Oslo Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) and under eminent conductors such as Boulez, Davis and Rattle. Along the way she has premiered several landmark compositions, collaborated with leading jazz and pop artists from South African jazz to cutting-edge electronica, and devised multimedia projects that have toured internationally.

Joanna made her conducting debut in 2002 and regularly directs her own orchestral projects. She enjoyed a close artistic partnership as conductor and performer with the Britten Sinfonia, with whom she toured South America and created the acclaimed Moondog/Art of Fugue project - a radical re-working of Bach's late masterpiece alongside the music of the famous 1950s New York street musician, released as 'Sidewalk Dances'.

Her album 'Play', on her own record label SoundCircus, received a Mercury Prize nomination, and her teaching books 'Piano World' have been hailed as 'worthy of the new millennium'. She is also Artistic Director of the Bath International Music Festival.

In this course she guides you through Messiaen's monumental 'Vingt Regards sur L'Enfant-Jesus', sharing the insight, technique and interpretive imagination you need to bring one of the great works of the piano repertoire to life.