Lifetime-achievement awards? Some recipients are embarrassed by them. Others are sniffy about them. Many are mortified by the shovelfuls of obituary-style praise. Not Sir James Galway.
The 73-year-old flautist, who will be presented with the second National Concert Hall Lifetime Achievement Award tonight, already has a stack of honours to his name, not least an OBE and a knighthood.
But he seems genuinely delighted by this one, which recognises musicians who have contributed significantly to the musical life of Ireland. "It's very special," he says. The inaugural award was won last year by Paddy Moloney and The Chieftains, with whom Galway has often collaborated. Tonight's celebratory gala at the NCH will be like a who's who of Irish music as Galway is joined onstage by Moloney, the pianist Barry Douglas and the singer Brian Kennedy.
Since he launched his solo career, in 1975, Galway has become Mr Flute on the international circuit. Look up any discussion of the instrument online and you'll find his name near the top of the list. He has sold 30 million albums, performed with Pink Floyd on the Berlin Wall, played on the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. He has shared a stage with just about everyone, from Herbert von Karajan to Andrea Bocelli.
And he’s as busy as ever. Between now and Christmas his schedule will include the opening concert of the Belfast Festival at Queen’s with the Ulster Orchestra, a 14-city US tour with the Irish Chamber Orchestra and a gig at Carnegie Hall. Not bad for someone who began his musical life more than half a century ago as a wee boy with a wooden flute? Galway chuckles. “My grandad played the flute,” he says. “He taught my Uncle Joe, who taught me.” The roguish eyes twinkle. “Maybe you didn’t know this, but I started on the violin. A lady on our street, Mrs Shearer, gave me a violin, and I got some lessons from a friend of my dad’s. But the violin sort of fell to bits, because it was home sweet home to millions of Irish woodworms, and they kept chomping away as I played.”
The flute was a better fit, both with the nine-year-old Galway’s eyes – he has nystagmus, a congenital condition which meant that as a child he had to keep his eyes to the side to keep them still – and with local tradition. He grew up in a terrace of houses on Carnalea Street, in Protestant east Belfast. His father was a riveter; money was in short supply. Tough times?
“You see, I didn’t realise this because we were kids and everything for us was just great,” he says. “On the weekend we’d go to a place called Alec’s Bank – which was the local dump. We used to go down there and set fire to old tyres and stuff like that. One of the kids in school, Billy Chambers, gave me a dynamo in exchange for a stamp that he wanted in his collection.
“So I gave him the stamp and he says, ‘Just take this home and plug those two wires in and it’ll be great.’ I plugged the two wires in and fused the whole street. Of course when my dad came home he beat the cr – he corrects himself – “the living daylights out of me.”
Other childhood amusements included stealing slips of paper from a local bank –“they made great paper aeroplanes” – and vegetables from the local grocery shop. “We’d get up to the top of our street – which had a couple of houses missing courtesy of the Luftwaffe – we’d light a fire up there and cook the spuds.”
But he also found time – lots of time – to practise the flute. He was in good company: his father played the piano accordion and his brother George learned the clarinet. "The first pieces I learned were not flute pieces," he says. "They were folk songs like All Through the Night."
Galway made quick musical progress. “I would say that it was almost like a computer game for me,” he says. “You tried something and then you tried to make it go to the next stage. Always going to the next stage.”
Sureness of delivery and a solid classical technique have, along with his showmanship, taken Galway from his first job, as second flute at the Paris Opera, to the heights of international crossover stardom.
He now plays a gold flute, manufactured to his own specifications. “And it’s got my name on it,” he jokes. “That’s really posh.” Bling for bling’s sake? He shakes his head. “It’s not just the sound and the look but the response,” he says. “Gold flutes are very responsive compared with silver or any other metal. Platinum’s very good, too.”
The name, inscribed discreetly on side of the instrument, reads “Sir James Galway”. Why does his knighthood, awarded in 2001, mean so much to him? “You know, coming from the north of Ireland, you’re a sort of special animal, because you’re not really Irish and you’re not really British,” he says.
He talks for several minutes about his education, his wife’s mother singing at Mass, Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Dublin last year. “It’s a nice thing to have,” he concludes. As is the current award. Coming as it does from within the world of kosher classical music, and from the “other” side of the Border, in a way it brings Galway back home.
