Sir Clive Gillinson, Advisory Board Member
Advisory Board Member
Executive and Artistic Director, Carnegie Hall
Sir Clive Gillinson was born in Bangalore, India, in 1946; his mother was a professional cellist and his father, a businessman, also wrote and painted. Clive began studying the cello at the age of eleven and played in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain for three years, before entering Queen Mary College, London University, to study maths. He left after one year, having realized that music had to be his life, and joined the Royal Academy of Music, where he won the top cello prize.
In 1970, he was recruited as a cellist by the London Symphony Orchestra and was elected to the Board of Directors of the self-governing orchestra in 1976, also serving as Finance Director. In 1984, he was asked by the Board to become the LSO’s Managing Director, a position he held for 21 years, until he was recruited to become the Executive and Artistic Director of Carnegie Hall in 2005.
At Carnegie Hall he is responsible for developing the artistic concepts for Carnegie Hall presentations in its three halls, representing up to 170 performances each season, ranging from orchestral concerts, chamber music, solo recitals, to jazz, world, and popular music. He oversees the management of all aspects of the Hall, including strategic and artistic planning, resource development, education, finance, and administration and operations for the Weill Music Institute, which, every year, taps the resources of Carnegie Hall to bring music education and social impact programs to hundreds of thousands of people every year in New York, across the United States, and around the world, in addition to many more online.
Since his arrival in New York, Clive has worked to build on the quality, creativity, diversity, and extraordinary history for which Carnegie Hall is known worldwide. Under his leadership, Carnegie Hall has embarked on many bold new directions in its concert and education programming, including augmenting and integrating current offerings to create large-scale multi-cultural citywide festivals in which the Hall partners with many of NYC’s leading cultural institutions; created the National Youth Orchestra of the USA (NYO-USA), NYO Jazz, and NYO 2 (a younger orchestra that offers a pathway for students who have not had access to best teaching and other opportunities) – these ensembles tour the world as youth ambassadors for the USA; and developed Carnegie Hall +, Carnegie Hall’s video on demand subscription channel, which offers the finest performances of music, opera, and dance, from the greatest artists and venues around the world, to ever expanding audiences.
In the UK, Clive served as Chairman of the Association of British Orchestras; was one of the founding Trustees of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts; and was founding Chairman of the Management Committee of the Clore Leadership Programme. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in the 1999 New Year Honours List and received the 2004 Making Music Sir Charles Grove Prize for his outstanding contribution to British music. He was appointed Knight Bachelor in the Queen's Birthday Honours List 2005, the only orchestra manager ever to be honored with a Knighthood.