Sir
James Galway OBE (born
8 December 1939) is an Iris virtuoso flute player from Belfast, nicknamed "The
Man with the Golden Flute". He established an international career as a
solo flute player. In 2005, he received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music at
the Classic Brit Awards. Galway
was born in North Belfast as one of two brothers. His father, who played the
flute, was employed at the Harland and Wolff shipyard until the end of the Second
World War and spent night-shifts cleaning buses after the war, while his
mother, a pianist, was a winder in a flax-spinning mill. Surrounded by a
tradition of flute bands and many friends and family members who played the
instrument, he was taught the flute by his uncle at the age of nine and joined
his fife and drum corps. At
the age of eleven Galway won the junior, senior, and open Belfast flute
Championships in a single day. His first instrument was a five-key Irish flute, and at the age of twelve or thirteen, he received
a Boehm instrument. He left school at the age of fourteen
and worked as an apprentice to a piano repairer for two years. He subsequently
studied the flute at the Royal College of Music under
John Francis and at the Guildhall School of Music under Geoffrey Gilbert. He then briefly studied at the Paris Conservatoire under Gaston Crunelle. While in Paris, he asked for lessons from the
celebrated French flute player Jean-Pierre Rampal, who
offered him advice on his playing, but felt he was already too good a flute
player to need lessons from either Rampal or the conservatory. He left Paris to
take up his first orchestral flute-playing job at Sadler's Wells Opera in
London. He
went on to spend fifteen years as an orchestral player. In addition to Sadler's Wells , he played
with Covent Garden Opera,
the London Symphony Orchestra and
the Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra. He auditioned for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Herbert von Karajan and
was principal flute in the orchestra from 1969 to 1975. To Karajan's surprise
and dismay, after a period of some disagreement, Galway decided that he would
leave to pursue a solo career. In addition to his performances of
the standard classical repertoire, he features contemporary music in his
programmes, including new flute works commissioned by and for him by composers
including David Amram, Malcolm Arnold, William
Bolcom, John Corigliano, John Wolf Brennan, Dave Heath, Lowell Liebermann and Joaquín Rodrigo. The
album James Galway and The Chieftains in Ireland by Galway
and The Chieftains reached
number 32 in the UK Albums Chart in
1987. Galway still performs regularly and is one of the world's
best-known flute players. His recordings have sold over 30 million copies. In
1990, he was invited by Roger Waters to play at The Wall – Live in Berlin concert, held in Potsdamer Platz; he played Pink Floyd's songs "Goodbye Blue Sky" and "Is There Anybody Out
There?". Galway performed for the Academy Award-winning
ensemble recording the
soundtracks of Peter Jackson's The Lord of
the Rings film trilogy, composed by Howard Shore. In June 2008, he was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame along with Liza Minnelli and B. B. King. he performs on Nagahara flutes,
as well as some Muramatsu Flutes. Conn-Selmer produces his line of flutes, "Galway
Spirit Flutes". Galway is president of Flutewise, a global charitable
organisation that supports young flute players, run by Liz Goodwin. In
2003 he formed the Music Education Consortium together with Julian Lloyd Webber, Evelyn Glennie, and Michael Kamen to pressure the British Government into
providing better music education in schools. He is an Ambassador for the
National Foundation for Youth Music, a UK charity. He was made an Officer of
the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1977, and was knighted in 2001, the first wind player ever to
receive that honour. He is a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity.
In December 2013 Galway launched First Flute, an online interactive
series of lessons for beginning flute students of all ages. He received the
2014 Gramophone Lifetime Achievement Award.