Bill McGlaughlin

William McGlaughlin (born October 3, 1943) is an American composer, conductor, music educator, and Peabody Award-winning classical music radio host.

He is the host and music director of the public radio programs Exploring Music and Saint Paul Sunday.

In high school, McGlaughlin took up the trombone, which he further studied in college, obtaining his Bachelor of Music degree from Philadelphia's Temple University in 1967.

Upon graduation in 1967 he became Assistant Principal Trombonist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, a position he held through 1968.

From 1969 to 1975 he was Co-Principal Trombonist of the Pittsburgh Symphony.

In 1969 he completed a Master of Music degree in conducting at Temple University, studying under Robert Page; and in addition he received private instruction and tutelage from William R. Smith, Associate Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Max Rudolf.

McGlaughlin also became assistant conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Chamber Orchestra during his period with the Pittsburgh Symphony.

During his years as a trombonist after his master's degree, he brought a full orchestral score to rehearsals, taking careful notes on how good and poor conductors handled difficult passages.

In addition, during these years in Pennsylvania, McGlaughlin performed in groups such as the Pittsburgh Symphony Players, which he founded in 1973, the Penn Contemporary Players, and the Philadelphia Composers Forum.

In 1973, he asked Georg Solti whether he should pursue a conducting career; Solti encouraged him, but insisted he needed an orchestra to practice with.

McGlaughlin formed three orchestras in Pittsburgh that year — an orchestra of college students, the Pittsburgh Camerata, and the Upper Partials Chamber Players.

McGlaughlin himself founded the Pittsburgh Camerata (1973), which focused on contemporary music, and he was a steady proponent of living composers' works in Kansas City as well.

Eventually, this championing became a desire to compose on his own.

He also performed as trombonist during many of his 1975–1982 years with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

Orchestral performance sparked McGlaughlin's interest in conducting — an interest which was encouraged by Pittsburgh Symphony's William Steinberg.

His practice paid off: In 1975, he was awarded the Exxon-Arts Conducting Endowment, and an assistant conductorship at the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

This led to a series of conducting positions:

During his 12-year tenure with the Kansas City Symphony, McGlaughlin greatly expanded the orchestra's repertoire, commissioned many new works, recorded albums, made two nationwide television broadcasts, including a Christmas special with the King's Singers, greatly strengthened the orchestra's reputation, and brought it to a state of "unparalleled artistic and financial success."

In addition, he received five ASCAP Adventurous Programming Awards for his continued performing of contemporary music, and for aiding Kansas City Symphony audiences in understanding the composers' intentions in these works.

McGlaughlin has also continuously had numerous guest conducting engagements, from a great variety of orchestras around the U.S.

McGlaughlin was early on a champion of living composers and new music, dating back to his Pennsylvania days and his involvement with groups such as the Penn Contemporary Players and the Philadelphia Composers Forum.

A nationally noted radio commentator since 1981, Bill McGlaughlin is known for his cheerful, open, and down-to-earth personality on classical music radio.

Beyond his career as a broadcaster and music educator, McGlaughlin has also spent a decade as a professional orchestral musician, over three decades as a conductor, and a decade as a successful composer.

He views the more recent, radio broadcast aspect of his musical career as outreach — as a way to keep classical music from becoming an increasingly marginalized art form, with ever-smaller and older audiences.

McGlaughlin was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and his unusual accent stems from his Philadelphia childhood and the influence of his Scottish-American grandfather, with whom he lived during his early childhood and late teens.

Bill absorbed the music of opera at a very young age, as his draftsman father listened while in his at-home workshop.

When Bill was 6, his father gave him a harmonica, and together they enjoyed playing their favorite opera melodies by ear.

His father also had many instrumental classical albums, which Bill enjoyed listening to in his own bedroom.

Bill's mother, a high-school English teacher, was also a music lover.

At the age of 14, McGlaughlin received his first piano lesson, quite by accident — his younger brother had been taking a series of pre-paid piano lessons but abruptly quit, so Bill was given the remainder.

By his second lesson, he knew he wanted to be a professional musician, and began practicing eight hours a day.

In 1998, he left his conducting position and moved to New York City to concentrate on composing.

Prompted by the death of a friend who was a Kansas City pianist and composer, McGlaughlin's first major work was Three Dreams and a Question: Choral Songs on e.e. cummings — which he debuted with the Kansas City Symphony on April 28, 1998, to an enthusiastic audience and press.

Some of the other 20 works he created in his first decade of composing, most of them commissioned, include: Aaron's Horizons (a tribute to colleague Aaron Copland); Echoes, for horn trio; Angelus, a 9/11 remembrance; Three Pieces for Wind Trio; Bagatelles, for saxophone quartet; The Heart's Light: An Essay for Orchestra; Three by Six, for chamber ensemble; and The Bells of St. Ferdinand, for orchestra.

For a millennial celebration, he was chosen from a field of 350 composers to write a major new work for Continental Harmony, a nationwide cultural initiative commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Composers Forum.

The composition, Walt Whitman's Dream, premiered in July 2000, and celebrated the new millennium with a combined chorus of nearly 800 singers from around the world, accompanied by orchestra.

On December 15, 2005, the national two-hour daily NPR classical music radio program Performance Today announced that out of all of the music aired that week, McGlaughlin's new composition Remembering Icarus garnered the most, and the most heartfelt, listener response.

The piece has been re-broadcast on radio three times.

Discussing his own music, McGlaughlin describes his compositional style as more intuitive than intellectual, and says that he does not shun tonality: "I think when composers turn completely away from tonality, they lose a big part of storytelling."

Some of his work incorporates or references elements of jazz — for instance Bela's Bounce, an homage to Béla Bartók and Charlie Parker.