Professor John Pickard wins top music award

Launched in 1977, with winners selected by the 45 critics of the prestigious Gramophone magazine, the Gramophone Awards are widely considered to be among the most significant in the international classical music industry.

Recent recipients have included the violinist Itzhak Perlman, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the soprano Dame Emma Kirkby.

The album of Professor Pickard’s work has been issued on the BIS Records label and is entitled The Gardener of Aleppo, after the first of the compositions on the disc.

The albumcovers more than 30 years of Professor Pickard’s composing career and is played by the Nash Ensemble, the resident chamber ensemble at London’s Wigmore Hall.

One of the works on the disc, Daughters of Zion, composed in 2016, is a collaboration with the poet Gavin De Costa, Professor in Catholic Theology at Bristol’s Department of Religion and Theology.

Receiving the award, Professor Pickard said: “I am absolutely delighted to be able to accept this award on behalf of a whole team of people who were involved in the recording.

“It is particularly pleasing for me personally to receive the award because the disc includes music from throughout my composing career. I wrote the earliest piece on the disc when I was 20 years old.”