Tom Service (born 8 March 1976) is a Scottish writer, music journalist, and television and radio presenter. He has written regularly for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' since 1999 and presented on

BBC Radio 3 BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, Radio drama, drama, High culture, culture and the arts ...

since 2001. He is a regular presenter of

the Proms The BBC Proms is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in central London. Robert Newman founded The Proms in 1895. Since 1927, the ...

for Radio 3 and has presented several documentaries on

classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be #Relationship to other music traditions, distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical mu ...

Early life

Service was born in

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

and attended Kelvinside Academy, where he learned

cello The violoncello ( , ), commonly abbreviated as cello ( ), is a middle pitched bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), tuned i ...

and

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

. Service studied music at the

University of York The University of York (abbreviated as or ''York'' for Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a public Collegiate university, collegiate research university in York, England. Established in 1963, the university has expanded to more than thir ...

, then studied for a masters in music at the

University of Southampton The University of Southampton (abbreviated as ''Soton'' in post-nominal letters) is a public university, public research university in Southampton, England. Southampton is a founding member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universit ...

. He wrote his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

thesis on American composer and musician

John Zorn John Zorn (born September 2, 1953) is an American composer, conducting, conductor, saxophonist, arrangement, arranger and record producer, producer who "deliberately resists category". His Avant-garde music, avant-garde and experimental music, ex ...

Career

Broadcasting

Service joined

in 2001 presenting ''Hear and Now'', and from 2003 he has presented ''Music Matters''. From 2016, he started presenting a weekly show also on Radio 3, called ''The Listening Service'', which drew comparisons to David Munrow's programme ''Pied Piper'', which aired on the same station in the 1970s Since 2011 Service has presented

, broadcast on Radio 3, from the

Royal Albert Hall The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London, England. It has a seating capacity of 5,272. Since the hall's opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from many performance genres ...

and

Cadogan Hall Cadogan Hall is a 950-seat capacity concert hall in Sloane Terrace in Chelsea, London, Chelsea in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England. The resident music ensemble at Cadogan Hall is the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra ( ...

, as well as presenting special editions of ''The Listening Service'' in 2017 exploring the musical pathways between featured composers and the BBC Proms Guide. In 2014 Service made the first of a series of documentaries with historian Amanda Vickery, produced by Reef Television for the BBC, titled ''Messiah at the Foundling Hospital''. The programme received mixed reviews with ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...

'' criticising the delivery of both presenters and its inaccuracies and ''

The Arts Desk ''The Arts Desk'' (theartsdesk.com) is a British arts journalism website containing reviews, interviews, news, and other content related to music, theatre, television, films, and other art forms written by journalists from a variety of tradition ...

'' being very positive. A second film, ''La traviata: Love, Death and Divas'' followed in 2016. The third film, also in 2016 with Amanda Vickery, was the documentary ''Leningrad & the Orchestra that Defied Hitler'' for

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's second flagship channel, and it covers a wide range of subject matte ...

about the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the performance of Symphony No. 7 (Leningrad Symphony) by

Dmitri Shostakovich Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his First Symphony in 1926 and thereafter was regarded as a major composer. Shostak ...

. In 2015 Service wrote and presented ''The Joy of Mozart'', a documentary for BBC Four, which ''The Daily Telegraph'' described as "joyous" and "richly enjoyable". The film aimed to deconstruct some of the myths surrounding

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age ...

and the romanticism that has been built around his life and relationships. This was followed in January 2016 by ''The Joy of Rachmaninoff'', featuring Vladimir Ashkenazy,

Steven Isserlis Steven John Isserlis (born 19 December 1958) is a British cellist. An acclaimed soloist, chamber musician, educator, writer and broadcaster, he is widely regarded as one of the leading musicians of his generation. He is also noted for his div ...

and

Stephen Hough Sir Stephen Andrew Gill Hough (; born 22 November 1961) is a British-Australian classical pianist, composer and writer. Biography Hough was born in Heswall (then in Cheshire) on the Wirral Peninsula, and grew up in Thelwall, where he began pi ...

. Also in 2016 Service presented a documentary film tribute to

Peter Maxwell Davies Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (8 September 1934 – 14 March 2016) was an English composer and conductor, who in 2004 was made Master of the Queen's Music. As a student at both the University of Manchester and the Royal Manchester College of Music ...

for BBC 4 called ''Sir Peter Maxwell Davies: Master and Maverick'', described by David Chater of ''The Sunday Times'' as “memorable” and with a “lucid commentary”.

Writing

Since 1999 Service has written about classical music for ''

'' newspaper. In his 2012 book ''Music as Alchemy: Journeys with Great Conductors and their Orchestras'', he examined music through studies of and interviews with six conductors, each preparing a performance with their

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * String instruments, such as the violin, viola, cello, ...

. In a four-star review in ''The Daily Telegraph'', Sameer Raham described the book as "excellent" and an "enthralling study". Suzy Klein of ''

New Statesman ''The New Statesman'' (known from 1931 to 1964 as the ''New Statesman and Nation'') is a British political and cultural news magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first c ...

'' also found it to be "excellent", while expressing disappointment that the conductors themselves weren't able to clearly describe "what makes an exceptional, alchemical conductor". ''

The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British newspaper published weekly in printed magazine format and daily on Electronic publishing, digital platforms. It publishes stories on topics that include economics, business, geopolitics, technology and culture. M ...

'' found the interview portions "not particularly rewarding" but said "the book's strength is in its mix of stories and perspectives". In 2013, Service collaborated with

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...

and conductor

Thomas Adès Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès (born 1 March 1971) is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: ''The Tempest (opera), The T ...

to write the book ''Thomas Adès: Full of Noises. Conversations with Tom Service''. '' Opera News'' described the book as "two hundred pages of brilliant talk" and said of Service that "there's no doubting the intelligence he brings to the project". ''

Classical Music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be #Relationship to other music traditions, distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical mu ...

'' magazine described the conversations as “a great battle of wills and provokes an unapologetically complex book”.

Teaching

Service was Professor of Music from 2018 to 2019 at

Gresham College Gresham College is an institution of higher learning located at Barnard's Inn Hall off Holborn in Central London, England that does not accept students or award degrees. It was founded in 1597 under the Will (law), will of Sir Thomas Gresham, ...

and has taught at

Trinity College Of Music Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance is a music, dance, and musical theatre conservatoire based in South East London. It was formed in 2005 as a merger of two older institutions – Trinity College of Music and Laban Dance Centre. Trini ...

Personal life

In 2015 Service married Russian violinist

Alina Ibragimova Alina Rinatovna Ibragimova (; born 28 September 1985) is a Russian-British violinist. Early life and education Ibragimova was born in Polevskoy, Russian SSR, to a Tatar family. Her family was musical, and she began playing the violin at ...

, whom he first met while interviewing her for ''The Guardian''. They lived in

Greenwich Greenwich ( , , ) is an List of areas of London, area in south-east London, England, within the Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county of Greater London, east-south-east of Charing Cross. Greenwich is notable for its maritime hi ...

, London. The couple divorced in 2018.

References

External links

*
Recording
from

Hay Festival The Hay Festival of Literature & Arts, better known as the Hay Festival (), is an annual literature festival held in Hay-on-Wye, Powys, Wales, for 10 days from May to June. Devised by Norman, Rhoda and Peter Florence in 1988, the festival was d ...

2012: Simon Rattle talks to Tom Service {{DEFAULTSORT:Service, Tom 1976 births Living people Academics of Trinity College of Music Alumni of the University of Southampton Alumni of the University of York BBC Radio 3 presenters British classical music critics Musicians from Glasgow People educated at Kelvinside Academy Scottish music critics Scottish television presenters The Guardian journalists