Raymond Gubbay

Who is Raymond Gubbay?

Raymond Gubbay is a classical music promoter and impresario based in London. The programme to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his starting out as a promoter says that, after arranging small scale concerts around the UK, he began gradually to promote in London. He now presents more than seventy performances each year at London's Royal Albert Hall and hundreds more around the UK and in Europe and Australia.

He grew up in a comfortable middle-class Jewish household of a fairly prosperous accountant. In 1966 he started on his own, presenting concerts with three or four singers and a pianist at small halls and theatres. He began promoting in London in 1968, first on South Bank and later at the Royal Festival Hall, and from the early 1970s at the Royal Albert Hall.

The opening of the Barbican Centre in 1982 allowed him to expand the number of London concerts and he is regarded as having helped the Barbican to establish itself at a difficult time after the opening. Among the well-known names he has worked with at the Barbican are Luciano Pavarotti, Kiri Te Kanawa, James Galway, Victor Borge, Ray Charles, Henry Mancini, Yehudi Menuhin, and all four London symphony orchestras. His "Teddy Bears" concerts introduced young children to the concert hall in an informal and light-hearted way. At the Royal Festival Hall, he has presented concerts including the four-concert Fiftieth Birthday series by violin virtuoso, Itzhak Perlman.