Ronan Magill

Who is Ronan Magill?

Ronan Magill is a British concert pianist and composer.

Born to Irish parents in Sheffield, Ronan Magill was a pupil at Ampleforth College, the prominent Catholic boarding school in North Yorkshire. Having begun to study with Fanny Waterman, he met Benjamin Britten -- who, impressed by his abilities, became the young Magill's mentor. This relationship lasted until Britten's death in 1976.

Magill was among the first intake of students at the Yehudi Menuhin School, where he was taught by Marcel Gazelle.

As a student at the Royal College of Music, Magill studied with David Parkhouse and John Barstow and Philip Cannon. While at the College, he was awarded all the major prizes for both disciplines, finally graduating with the Hopkinson Gold Medal for piano and the Cobbett prize for composition.

After his Wigmore Hall and South Bank debuts in 1974, Magill moved to Paris to study with Yvonne Lefebure at the Conservatoire; while there, he won the Premier Prix for piano, and in the years that followed made a number of appearances on French radio and television. His later teachers include Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Pierre Sancan and Nikita Magaloff.