Howard Shelley

Howard Gordon Shelley OBE (born 9 March 1950) is a British pianist and conductor. He was educated at Highgate School and the Royal College of Music. He is married to fellow pianist Hilary Macnamara, with whom he has performed and recorded in a two-piano partnership, and they have two sons.

Howard Shelley first learned piano with a local Highgate teacher Vera Yelverton - possibly one of the finest piano teachers of her time. Under her tutelage, he performed frequently at the Recital room and later the Purcell room of the royal Festival Hall. Later, he attended the Royal College of music and studied first under Prof. Kendal Taylor. After winning the premier prize at the Royal College of Music at the end of his first year, Howard Shelley's career began with a successful London recital and a televised Promenade concert with the London Symphony Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas in the same season. Since then he has performed regularly throughout the UK, Europe, Scandinavia, North America, Russia, Australia, and the Far East. He has also made over seventy-five commercial recordings.

In 1994, an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Music was conferred on him by HRH The Prince of Wales.

As pianist he has performed, broadcast and recorded around the world with leading orchestras and conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Pierre Boulez, Sir Adrian Boult, Colin Davis, Mariss Jansons, Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Kurt Sanderling. During the fortieth anniversary of Sergei Rachmaninoff's death he became the first pianist ever to perform the composer's complete solo piano works in concert. The five London recitals, in London's Wigmore Hall, were broadcast in their entirety by the BBC.

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