The Man with the Golden Flute

James Galway

Description

The internationally acclaimed, widely beloved flutist reflects on his storied career

Sir James Galway is one of the top musicians of our time, with a dazzling career that has spanned five decades and many genres of music. Now he celebrates his seventieth birthday with a look back on his incredible career, during which he has traveled around the world many times over and made countless friends, including legends from the worlds of classical and popular music. He reflects on the challenges he faced coming from the poverty of working-class Belfast and making the decision to go solo as a flutist, as well as the triumphs as he made his way to the top of his profession.

• Offers a rare, personal glimpse at the life of a modern musical master whose work has ranged across the musical spectrum with collaborators as diverse as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chieftains, John Denver, and Pink Floyd
• Includes delightful stories from Galway's career of more than fifty years
• Shares the challenges of touring and of melding public and private life

By turns witty and informative, engaging and inspiring, The Man with the Golden Flute is a captivating read for fans of Galway and his music.
Acknowledgments.

PRELUDE: KNIGHTHOOD DAY.

1 IN THE BEGINNING.

2 INTO THE WIDER WORLD.

3 BUILDING A CAREER.

4 ICH WAR EIN BERLINER.

5 TURNING POINT.

6 THE SOLOIST’S WORLD.

7 PUBLIC LIFE, PRIVATE LIFE.

8 INSIDE THE MUSIC.

9 POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE.

10 THE FLUTE AND ME.

Discography.

Index.

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• Lettres et linguistique
• Biography
• Music of Ireland
• Celtic music
• Autobiography
• Music

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 18 février 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470638194
• Langue: English

Extrait

Table of Contents
 
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
PRELUDE
 
Chapter 1 - IN THE BEGINNING
Chapter 2 - INTO THE WIDER WORLD
Chapter 3 - BUILDING A CAREER
Chapter 4 - ICH WAR EIN BERLINER
Chapter 5 - TURNING POINT
Chapter 6 - THE SOLOIST’S WORLD
Chapter 7 - PUBLIC LIFE, PRIVATE LIFE
Chapter 8 - INSIDE THE MUSIC
Chapter 9 - POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE
Chapter 10 - THE FLUTE AND ME
 
DISCOGRAPHY
Index

This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright © 2009 by Crossbow Flute Holding AG and Linda Bridges. All rights reserved
 
Lincoln Center and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts names and logos are registred trademarks of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc., in the United States and other countries. Used here by license.
 
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
 

 
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Galway, James.
The man with the golden flute : Sir James, a Celtic minstrel / James Galway with Linda Bridges.
p. cm.
Includes index.
eISBN : 978-0-470-63819-4
1. Galway, James. 2. Flute players—Biography. I. Bridges, Linda, 1949- II. Title.
ML419.G28A3 2009 788.3’2092—dc22 [B]
2009025213
 

 
To Jeanne, my favorite touring companion
Acknowledgments
This book was inspired by my manager, Elizabeth Sobol, my long-time friend and guide. She suggested that I do this in connection with my seventieth birthday, which I am celebrating on December 8, 2009, and I thought it was a great idea if we could pull it off.
She put me in touch with Hana Lane, an editor at John Wiley & Sons. Hana is a wonderful person for getting things together. She got in touch with a writer she had worked with before, Linda Bridges, and the two of them came to visit my wife, Jeanne, and me when we were in New York last summer. We talked for a bit and decided we would go for it. But Jeanne and I were very busy, touring and teaching our annual master class. So I didn’t really do much with this book until I got a series of promptings from Linda. The last of these was an e-mail that said, “Dear Jimmy, The date is fast approaching—we’ve got to do it.” So I buckled down, and we’ve been e-mailing and talking back and forth ever since.
Jeanne helped me a lot, reminding me of funny things that had happened along the way, supplying names and dates, and offering me cup after cup of tea while I was working. I started to wonder, How many cups of tea am I going to drink before we’ve finished this book?
I’d also like to mention Christopher McDonald, the retired former president of Rolex Japan. He also helped me by supplying dates and jogging my memory about Japan, a country that has been very important in my career.
Then there’s my cousin Ann Kerr Black. Ann is one of my favorite cousins. We hadn’t seen each other for a long time because of my touring schedule. But we got back in touch a few years ago, and she helped jog my memory about family members, especially my grandfather, who died when I was only four years old.
Finally, I want to say thanks to all the people mentioned in the book who helped make my life so wonderful, and to all the people who are not in the book but should have been. You cannot have a career like the one I’ve had without a lot of people helping you along the way, and I am very grateful to them all.
PRELUDE
KNIGHTHOOD DAY
IT WAS THE NINTH OF DECEMBER 2001—THE DAY AFTER my sixty-second birthday—when we all set off to London from Switzerland, where we live. By “we,” I mean my wife, Jeanne, and my daughter Jenny and me.
The reason we were going to London was for me to receive my knighthood from the Queen of England. That was a great occasion in my life, but it started out not too auspiciously.
My first problem was with my British management. My name had been on the Birthday Honours List, which comes out in June. If your name is on the list, Buckingham Palace then gives you a choice of dates when you can receive your knighthood. I turned this decision over to my management, but they did nothing about it. They kept saying they wanted me to play a concert the day before or the day after the ceremony, but they never managed to pull it together. I believe you have twelve shots at choosing a date, and if you fail to do so, you are off the list. So I put on my thinking cap and decided I was not going to wait for anyone to arrange a concert for me in order to make the trip worthwhile. At the top of my mind was the fact that this was an honor from the queen, and I shouldn’t depend on my management to organize it for me. I simply made my own arrangements with the palace, concert or no concert.
The second problem was that my daughter Jenny has a terrible fear of flying. I find it hard to understand this from a young woman who has been flying with me since she was a small child, but there you are. When we eventually got her onto the airplane, she covered herself up from head to foot in a blanket and wasn’t seen again until we landed in London. She was fine, though, once she was back down on terra firma.
Then I discovered the third problem. I had arranged with my tailor to make me a morning suit. I had told him that I was flying in just the day before the ceremony and that he should have it ready. He knows me very well, knows my measurements and everything, as I had been buying clothes from him for years. Also, he specializes in tailoring for smaller men. But when I got there, the morning suit they had for me was miles too big—it would have looked great on someone who was six foot two, which I am not. It was far too late to do anything about it. Fortunately, though, I had with me a very good Italian black lounge suit, and that was permitted. My thoughts went back to when I was nineteen years old and was going to play as an extra in the London Symphony Orchestra. I needed white tie and tails, and I borrowed them from the father of my friend Jeremy Barlow. However, by 2001 Jeremy’s dad had passed away, and there was no question of borrowing a morning suit from him.
We were staying at no. 30 Chester Square, which is where I usually laid my head when in London, courtesy of my good friend Richard Colburn. We were well taken care of by Ron Young and his wife, Eileen, who looked after the house and Richard’s various transient guests. On the morning of the great day, we gathered downstairs in the dining room—Jeanne in her new hat; Jenny in her new hat; my son Stephen, who lives in England, all spruced up; and me in my black suit.
As we were standing there, Ron, who is a Welshman with a great sense of humor, said, “Well, Sir James, give my regards to Betty.”
“Who?” I asked.
And he said, “Betty.”
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“The queen,” he said. That was his affectionate way of referring to the Queen of England.
Then our chauffeur and friend Paul Knight drove up, and we all got in the car and headed off to Buckingham Palace. There was one more hitch: when we arrived, we found that we had forgotten to bring all of the papers that were necessary to get into the palace. At first, the security guys looked at me as if I were a person from another planet, coming to the palace without our invitations and so on. However, some of the guards knew me from the various occasions when I had played there, and the others all recognized me from television—it’s amazing, the power of television. They finally did let us in, and after that, all was smooth sailing.
First, I was shown to the room where we were going to rehearse the whole thing. While we were waiting, we were offered a drink and enjoyed the chitchat that precedes such an event. I met some of the other people who were receiving knighthoods that day. One of them was the chief constable of England, who was stationed in Cambridge. We got around to talking about bicycles, which are the bane of all university police.
“Don’t mention bicycles to me,” he said. “People