Professor with energy to burn

By GRAHAM REID

Joanna MacGregor's role models tell you a lot about the woman: jazz eccentric Thelonious Monk, zen classical composer John Cage and Pulitzer Prize-winner Charles Ives, who was a businessman by day and a composer inspired by transcendental philosophy at night.

MacGregor - who didn't go to school until she was 11 - also mentions Conlon Nancarrow, who composed for the player piano and once said, "As long as I've been writing music I've been dreaming of getting rid of the performers."

MacGregor is a concert pianist who embraces jazz, classical and contemporary music, has recorded the music of Erik Satie and John Adams, worked with British jazz saxophonist Andy Sheppard, and wrote the soundtrack for the Mike Figgis film The Loss of Sexual Innocence.

She may be a professor of music at Gresham College, but this is one academic who doesn't remain in the ivory tower. She has her own record label, SoundCircus, and on her most recent piano album, Play, she includes tape loops, delays and spoken word.

MacGregor is delightfully uninhibited in her exploration of musical styles yet had that most conventional of musical upbringings: her mother, who had studied at the Royal Academy for two years, taught her piano at home.

As a child she also loved pop music and would play songs from Top of the Pops to entertain friends at school. She discovered jazz at 12, and later ducked out of piano competitions because she felt it was a waste of energy which could be better used being creative. These days her creativity is boundless. She has been the artistic director of a concert series in Manchester, runs SoundCircus and records artists as diverse as Anglo-Indian Nitin Sawhney and Estonian Arvo Part, tours regularly, has played the Last Night of the Proms, appears on radio and television, and speaks of creating SoundCircus club nights around the globe.

Last year Play was on the shortlist for Britain's Mercury Prize alongside albums by Brit-rock bands the Coral, the Bees, Electric Soft Parade, the Doves and David Bowie. Not bad for someone whose reputation is in contemporary music.

She is ambitious, hot, energetic, talented and, best of all, coming here.

Joanna MacGregor will play an ambitious programme at the concert chamber on Sunday which includes Beethoven's variations on a theme in C minor, three tunes by young British jazz musician Django Bates, a Bartok piano sonata and Bach's Goldberg Variations.

Performance

* Who: Joanna MacGregor

* Where: Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber

* When: Sunday, July 20, 5.30pm