James Galway is probably the best known Irish classical musician, alive or dead. He's appropriated for the flute everything from Vivaldi's Four Seasons to Cesar Franck's Violin Sonata and Mozart's Clarinet Concerto. He's shown himself as happy to work in popular and crossover areas as in classical. He's featured on his own CD ROM.
He's prepared his own Galway-branded editions of the standard works of the flute repertoire. And, at 60, he's still going strong. His birthday is in December, but he's already on a celebratory tour, playing in Belfast on Tuesday and Dublin on Wednesday, sonatas by Reinecke and Prokofiev, plus a clutch of those showy bon-bons with which his name is so closely associated.
