James MacMillan awarded Honorary Membership of the Royal Philharmonic Society
21 Feb 2025
We are delighted to have presented Honorary Membership of the Royal Philharmonic Society to composer and conductor Sir James MacMillan.
RPS Honorary Membership was presented to James onstage at Glasgow City Halls on Thursday 20 February, within a concert in which he conducted the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3. The concert included the Scottish premiere of James MacMillan’s Concerto for Orchestra entitled Ghosts and new works by a host of younger Scottish composers whom James has mentored through his festival, The Cumnock Tryst.
Since 1826, the RPS has presented Honorary Membership in recognition of those who devote their lives to music and uplifting others with it. It was first presented to the composer Weber and subsequent recipients include Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, Brahms, Dvořák, Clara Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Stravinsky, Yehudi Menuhin, Fanny Waterman and more recently Evelyn Glennie, Marin Alsop, the broadcaster Humphrey Burton, the opera directors Graham Vick and David Pountney, Thea Musgrave, Stephen Sondheim, and Judith Weir. Recipients are annually chosen by the RPS Board and Council.
Presenting James with his certificate, RPS Chair Angela Dixon read the following citation:
‘James, what astonishing light, what gripping drama bursts out of your music. From the early thunderclaps of Veni, Veni Emmanuel and The Confession of Isobel Gowdie – premiered with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at the BBC Proms – to tonight’s new Concerto for Orchestra, every note you commit to manuscript reverberates with emotion and intent. Each work is the product of an extraordinary mind – and a generous heart. The Stabat Mater, the Seven Last Words, the Masses and the Passions are luminous expressions of your Catholic faith. Your Celtic heritage equally colours your concertos and symphonies, and works that wonderfully romp free of convention like The Berserking and A Scotch Bestiary.
Musicians worldwide cherish the adventures you create for them. That’s evident from the co-commissioners of tonight’s Concerto: in London, Melbourne, Stockholm, Auckland, and Singapore. It’s also in your golden associations over the years as a composer and conductor with the likes of the BBC Philharmonic and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic, and in your RPS Award-winning The Sacrifice which you wrote for Welsh National Opera drawing on Welsh folklore.
But it’s the musical roots you’ve cast here at home in Scotland that make you a national hero: from your links with Scotland’s leading ensembles, to your campaigning for music education, to your mentorship of the young composers we’re discovering tonight. You are a national treasure. Central to this is The Cumnock Tryst: your festival that annually enlivens and empowers the Ayrshire community where you were born. An RPS Award-winner itself in 2019, and shortlisted again this year, the festival is what music-making UK-wide should look like: creatively uniting local people and world-class artists as equals.’
ABOUT JAMES MACMILLAN
James MacMillan is the pre-eminent Scottish composer of his generation. He first attracted attention with the acclaimed BBC Proms premiere of The Confession of Isobel Gowdie (1990). His percussion concerto Veni, Veni Emmanuel (1992) has received over 500 performances worldwide by orchestras including London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics and Cleveland Orchestra. Other major works include the cantata Seven Last Words from the Cross (1993), Quickening (1998) for soloists, children's choir, mixed choir and orchestra, the operas Inès de Castro (2001) and The Sacrifice (2005-06), St John Passion (2007), St Luke Passion (2013) and Symphony No.5 entitled Le grand inconnu (2018).
James was featured composer at Edinburgh Festival (1993, 2019), Southbank Centre (1997), BBC’s Barbican Composer Weekend (2005) and Grafenegg Festival (2012). His interpreters include soloists Evelyn Glennie, Colin Currie, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Vadim Repin, conductors Leonard Slatkin, Sir Andrew Davis, Marin Alsop and Sir Donald Runnicles, choreographer Christopher Wheeldon and stage director Katie Mitchell. His recordings can be found on BMG/RCA Red Seal, BIS, Chandos, Naxos, Hyperion, Coro, Linn and Challenge Classics.
Recent highlights include James’s Stabat Mater for The Sixteen streamed from the Sistine Chapel and premieres of the 40-voice motet Vidi aquam, Christmas Oratorio streamed in 2021 by NTR Dutch Radio from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, and the anthem Who Shall Separate Us? commissioned for the funeral of HM Queen Elizabeth II in 2022. The Cumnock Tryst annual festival was founded by the composer in 2014 in his childhood town in Scotland.