Gerard McBurney (born 20 June 1954) is a British composer, arranger, broadcaster, teacher and writer.

Life

Born in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, England, he is the son of Charles McBurney, an American

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

, and Anne Francis Edmondstone (née Charles), who was a British secretary of English, Scots, and Irish ancestry. Gerard's younger brother is

Simon McBurney Simon Montagu McBurney (born 25 August 1957) is an English actor, playwright, and theatrical director. He is the founder and artistic director of the Théâtre de Complicité, London. He has had roles in the films '' The Manchurian Candidate'' ...

, an English actor, writer and director. Gerard was educated at

Winchester College Winchester College is a public school (fee-charging independent day and boarding school) in Winchester, Hampshire, England. It was founded by William of Wykeham in 1382 and has existed in its present location ever since. It is the oldest of the ...

, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge – where he read English Literature – and at the

Moscow Conservatory The Moscow Conservatory, also officially Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory (russian: Московская государственная консерватория им. П. И. Чайковского, link=no) is a musical educational inst ...

Work

For many years he lived in London, teaching first at the London College of Music and later, for 12 years, at the Royal Academy of Music. He also worked as artistic advisor with various orchestras, performers and presenters including

The Hallé The Hallé is an English symphony orchestra based in Manchester, England. It supports a choir, youth choir, youth training choir, children's choir and a youth orchestra, and releases its recordings on its own record label, though it has occasiona ...

, Complicite and

Lincoln Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 millio ...

. In September 2006, he was appointed Artistic Programming Advisor to the

Chicago Symphony Orchestra The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) was founded by Theodore Thomas in 1891. The ensemble makes its home at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival. The music director is Riccardo Muti, who began his tenure ...

and Creative Director of the CSO's multimedia series ''Beyond the Score'': * Bartók �
The Miraculous Mandarin
2006 *

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his ra ...

�
Piano Concerto No. 27, K.595
2007 *

Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , group=n ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. He wrote some of the most popu ...

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Symphony No. 4
2008 *

Shostakovich Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, , group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his First Symphony in 1926 and was regarded throughout his life as a major compo ...

�
Symphony No. 4
2008 *

Holst Gustav Theodore Holst (born Gustavus Theodore von Holst; 21 September 1874 – 25 May 1934) was an English composer, arranger and teacher. Best known for his orchestral suite ''The Planets'', he composed many other works across a range ...

�
The Planets: suite
2008 *

Vivaldi Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (4 March 1678 – 28 July 1741) was an Italian composer, virtuoso violinist and impresario of Baroque music. Regarded as one of the greatest Baroque composers, Vivaldi's influence during his lifetime was widesprea ...

�
The 4 Seasons
2008 *

Mussorgsky Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky ( rus, link=no, Модест Петрович Мусоргский, Modest Petrovich Musorgsky , mɐˈdɛst pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ ˈmusərkskʲɪj, Ru-Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky version.ogg; – ) was a Russian compo ...

Ravel Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In ...

�
Pictures from an Exhibition
2008 *

Sibelius Jean Sibelius ( ; ; born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius; 8 December 186520 September 1957) was a Finnish composer of the late Romantic and early-modern periods. He is widely regarded as his country's greatest composer, and his music is often ...

�
Symphony No. 5
2010 * Dvořák �
Symphony No. 9 (From the New World)
2010 *

Debussy (Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...

�
La Mer
2010 His original compositions include orchestral works, a ballet, a chamber opera, songs and chamber music as well as many theater scores. He also is well known for his reconstructions of various lost and forgotten works by

Dmitri Shostakovich Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, , group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 (Shostakovich), First Symphony in 1926 and was regarded throug ...

.In 2008 McBurney collaborated with Scottish poet

Iain Finlay Macleod Iain Finlay Macleod (born 1973) is a Scottish writer from Adabrock, Ness, Isle of Lewis. He lives on the Isle of Skye. Macleod's first full-length play was called "Homers" and was produced by the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in 2002, directed by P ...

, director Kath Burlinson and choreographer Struan Leslie on an adaptation of The Silver Bough by F. Marian McNeill. The resultant work was produced by

British Youth Music Theatre British Youth Music Theatre (BYMT), formerly Youth Music Theatre UK, is a UK-based national performing arts organisation founded in December 2003. BYMT provides music theatre training to young people aged 11–21 and a stepping stone to drama ...

at the

Aberdeen International Youth Festival Aberdeen International Youth Festival was a festival of performing arts and one of Scotland's major international cultural events, which ran from 1981 to 2017. Each year the festival brought over 1000 young people in performing arts companies ...

. As a scholar, he has published mostly in the field of Russian and Soviet music. For 20 years, he created and presented many hundreds of programmes on

BBC Radio 3 BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, Radio drama, drama, High culture, culture and the arts ...

(the classical music station of the

British Broadcasting Corporation #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

) as well as occasional programmes for other radio stations in the U.K., Europe and the former

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. Gerard McBurney has written, researched and presented more than two dozen documentary television films for British and German television channels, mostly working with the director

Barrie Gavin Barrie Gavin (born 10 June 1935) is a British film director. Early years Barrie Gavin was educated at St Paul's School, and studied history at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge from 1954 to 1957.'Cambridge Tripos Lists', ''Times'', 28 June ...

. His reconstruction of Shostakovich's rediscovered operatic fragment ''Orango'' was premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in December 2011.

Shostakovich reconstructions

* ''Hypothetically Murdered'' (1992) * ''Orango'' (2011)

Notes and references

External links

Biography

Gerard McBurney on The Music of World War II
a lecture recorded at the

Pritzker Military Museum & Library The Pritzker Military Museum & Library (formerly Pritzker Military Library) is a non-profit museum and a research library for the study of military history on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. The institution was founded in 2003, and its spe ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:McBurney, Gerard English male composers English radio presenters Living people 1954 births People from Cambridge Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 20th-century English composers 20th-century British male musicians 21st-century English composers 21st-century British male musicians People educated at Winchester College Moscow Conservatory alumni Academics of the University of West London Academics of the Royal Academy of Music English people of American descent