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 Donald Macleod Donald Macleod was educated in Glasgow and at St Andrew's University where he studied psychology. His musical education is fairly rudimentary: his piano teacher gave up on him at the age of 8, telling his parents that he was wasting their money! Listening to Radio 3 became a habit early on. Donald had envisaged a career working with an assortment of exotic creatures in the BBC’s Natural History Unit, but they wouldn’t have him. An alternative path opened up when he got a job at the BBC creating often outlandish sound effects in plays for the Radio Drama department. Never imagining that he would find himself rubbing shoulders with his broadcasting heroes, he began his career as a presenter in 1982 on BBC Radio 3 and for BBC1's 60 minutes as a TV reporter and newsreader. Donald was head of presentation on Radio 3 for four years, and in May 1996 he took up the challenge of setting up and presenting Through the Night, Radio 3's 24-hour broadcasting service. On Radio 3 he has presented a wide spectrum of music, from early plainchant to the premieres of the latest works by leading contemporary composers, and his work at the Proms has included all-night concerts of classical Indian music, and performances from Korea, China and Georgia. He has presented entire concert series featuring non-Western music from the South Bank Centre in London including Music of the Royal Courts, Spirit of the Earth and World Voice, and has also contributed programmes to Radio 3's Japan Season (1992). For several years Donald presented the live Monday lunchtime concert from St. John's Smith Square in London. Over the past twenty years Donald has interviewed many of the world’s great singers, instrumentalists and conductors as well as opera designers and directors. Opera is one of Donald’s big enthusiasms, and he has presented live relays of performances from all over Britain and Europe; highlights include three complete cycles of Wagner’s Ring – most recently Radio 3’s marathon Ring-in-a-Day in the spring of 2006. In the autumn of 1999 Donald landed what is undoubtedly one of the best jobs in broadcasting when he became the first person to present single-handedly Radio 3’s flagship programme Composer of the Week, whose 60th anniversary he was delighted to celebrate in 2003, making it older than him, and even older than Radio 3 and the Third Programme combined! Donald’s been getting away with it every week ever since, and he still hasn’t been rumbled. |
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