Introduction
Andrew Paul MacDonald has been contributing to the wealth of Canadian culture for the last forty years as a composer, guitarist, and pedagogue. Appointed to the Order of Canada in 2022 for his lifetime achievements in composition and performance, the works of Andrew Paul MacDonald have won many prestigious prizes, including the 1995 JUNO Award for “Best Classical Composition” for his Violin Concerto. His many compositions have been commissioned and performed across the country by Canada’s most outstanding orchestras, chamber ensembles, solo performers, and music competitions, as well as the Canadian Opera Company, Pacific Opera Victoria, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. His works are frequently broadcast on CBC and Société Radio-Canada, and have been performed in Australia, China, England, France, Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Taiwan, Turkey, the United States, Ukraine, and Canada. Thirty-five of his compositions have been recorded on twenty compact discs to date. MacDonald is also a concert guitarist who performs classical repertoire and his own compositions as a soloist, in a duo with pianist Carmen Picard, as a chamber musician with string quartet, and as a concerto soloist with orchestra. He also plays jazz with the MacDonald-Breton-Sullivan Trio and blues with The Future Blues Band.
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[Violinist Robert] Uchida considers it [the MacDonald Violin Concerto] to be “one of the greatest Canadian pieces written for solo violin. This concerto has everything—from incredible virtuosic writing to sheer depth, lyricism and beauty.”
The Ottawa Citizen • November 14, 2010
I will pass up no opportunity to hear more of his music, and suggest that you do likewise.
The Ottawa Citizen • August 8, 1996
At last, a Canadian composer for whom the expression “well orchestrated” is not a euphemism for “musically empty”. Canadian music? Well, we’ll take it.
The Montreal Gazette, Arthur Kaptainis • April 6, 1996
[The MacDonald Violin Concerto] sparkles with life, both in its brilliant writing for the soloist and its imaginative use of orchestral colour. It is instantly appealing and ought to find favour with audiences wherever it is performed.
Fanfare, Issue 19:1 • September-October, 1995
String Quartet and jazz guitar is an unusual and intriguing combination which MacDonald has the composition skills and the guitar chops to pull off very well.
The Whole Note, Ted Parkinson • May 20, 2022
[In Mary’s Wedding] MacDonald has set the unpretentiously eloquent libretto to music that is essentially tonal but which vividly captures both the lyricism of young love and the brutality of war.
Opera Magazine (UK), Bernard Jacobson • March, 2012
The work [Songs of Life’s Complaint], in total, was audacious, richly textured and as romantic in its way as the poems which inspired it.
The Omaha World-Herald • February 8, 1988
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MacDonald-Breton-Sullivan Trio
