A thousand reasons to listen to Joanna

July 1 2003

The busy pianist wants a break from media attention but is unlikely to get it, writes Harriet Cunningham.

Joanna MacGregor is giving up interviews. She's over it. Enough. No more.

It's a tricky situation for her agents and promoters. After all, they have CDs to promote and tickets to sell. But after 25 years as a frantically busy performer and all-round music personality, the usually forthcoming MacGregor is determined to take a break.

It may take a concerted effort to disentangle herself, not least because MacGregor is so damned interesting. She's intelligent, articulate and opinionated. She's trendy, outgoing and unconventional. She has a thousand stories to tell of her life travelling the world, drinking in the colourful experiences which make up this patchwork troubadour.

And did I mention she plays the piano brilliantly?

My first experience of MacGregor was in 1985 in Inverness, Scotland. The Edinburgh University Chamber Orchestra was giving a concert which included a piano concerto by composer Alasdair Nicolson, who was conducting the orchestra that term.

He had engaged as soloist the young and relatively unknown pianist Joanna MacGregor.

It was bitterly cold outside, and not much better indoors, so as the orchestra filed into the hall for a rehearsal the pianist was onstage, warming up her hands with a spot of Bach. I had never heard a piano transcription of the chaconne from Bach's second Partita and as the dense, hopelessly entangled figures tumbled out of the piano I was transfixed. This was fiery Bach, full of intellectual curiosity yet charged with passion.

Since then, MacGregor has been very busy. Highlights of a headlong music career include world premieres of works by Sir Harrison Birtwistle and Lou Harrison, collaborations with jazz artists Django Bates and Andy Sheppard, numerous recordings and the launch of her own record label, Soundcircus, dedicated to "new sounds for open ears".

MacGregor is also in demand as a lecturer, speaker and all-round person-with-attitude.

As such she has been artistic director of the Society for the Promotion of New Music, professor of music at Gresham College in London, is a member of the Arts Council of Great Britain and has just become artistic director of the Britten Sinfonia.

Cut to this year. MacGregor is in Australia to take part in Sydney Symphony's Contemporary Music Festival. It's the latest stop on a punishing performance schedule which saw her in China late last year (her own music, for a dance company), Ireland last week (recital - Beethoven, Bartok, Gribben) and before that London (sound installation and jazz set). Now it's July, it's Sydney, so it must be concerto time - Ligeti's ground-breaking piano concerto, to be precise. Is it any wonder that MacGregor has begun to scale back her media appearances, and concentrate on music?

"The centre of what I do is just sitting at the piano," she insists. But it's not easy - the music industry merry-go-round thrives on publicity, photo opportunities and soundbites, and MacGregor is someone who, by her own admission, is always ready to give her opinion.

"I answer questions when people ask them," she says, unapologetically. "I wouldn't think of myself as flamboyant but I don't look like your average musician." Her modish appearance and music video-style publicity shots don't help, and her work across so many musical styles gets her noticed by a broad swathe of music lovers.

But what fuels the never-ending creativity?

"I'm driven by an energy and a great love of what I do. It's not really a career so much as a way of life. My life is playing the piano, playing music."

Far from resenting the unrelenting travel, she revels in the cultural experiences it offers: "It's part of the life of a musician. It's a noble tradition - setting up your tent and playing and then moving onto the next place. I was playing in Sierra Leone at 22. Those kinds of experiences really make you question what you are playing and your whole role in music in the world. I've allowed it to affect every aspect of me."

Everywhere she goes MacGregor seeks out musicians, and every encounter, it seems, can start a new creative path. There's an almost childlike quality to the curiosity of this remarkable musical mind, which cannot resist prodding and playing along with every new idea.

"There is a problem with the music industry, pop music and distribution, and the way it's been controlled. It's a post-industrial way of dealing with music, this constant labelling. Music won't be labelled."

The sentiments quickly turn into mischief as she describes creating a record label designed to frustrate attempts to categorise her music. "I always started with the view that I would do things which were unclassifiable."

Her CD Play, which was nominated for Britain's top gong, the Mercury Music Prize, is a personal manifesto of music-making, which puts a Renaissance ballad in between a Piazolla tango and a Ligeti fragment. The disc includes funky collaborations with the tabla genius Talvin Singh and the South African jazz pianist Moses Molelekwa, and ends with her own composition, Dance It. Dance, pop, techno, jazz, world, classical? No one can agree, except on one thing: it's good.

With her combination of maverick mind, flamboyant style and conspicuous talent, MacGregor is unlikely to shake off constant media attention any time soon. She sounds almost exasperated as she says, "Nobody is like anybody else. Nobody should be. I could just play Bach every day for the rest of my life, but I feel compelled to do more. I suppose that's the difference between me and a lot of other pianists."

Too interesting by half.

Joanna MacGregor performs during the Contemporary Music Festival on:

Friday: Brilliant Ideas, with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, 8pm;

Sunday: Ecstatic Vision (solo performance), 2pm.

Both performances at the Verbrugghen Hall, Conservatorium of Music. Tickets: $20-$30.

On Tuesday, as part of the Sydney Symphony's International Piano Series, MacGregor is in recital, 8pm, City Recital Hall, Angel Place, city. Tickets: $48-$34.

Details/bookings: 93344600 or http://www.sydneysymphony.com

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