Donald Gillan

Donald Gillan joined the SCO in 2007. Before that he enjoyed a busy freelance career playing with chamber groups and orchestras including the Scottish, Paragon and Hebrides Ensembles, Northern Sinfonia, BBC SSO and Scottish Opera.

Donald was born in Aberdeen and had his first cello lesson on his sixth birthday. In 1989 he went to London to study with Eileen Croxford and William Pleeth as a scholarship student at the Royal College of Music where he won all the major cello prizes. After leaving the RCM, he won the Muriel Taylor Cello Prize which enabled him to continue post-graduate study with Emma Ferrand and Ralph Kirschbaum at the Royal Northern College of Music.

Donald’s varied career has also included writing music and playing with theatre companies, recording solo cello for film soundtracks, and sessions with numerous pop/folk groups and singers including Justin Currie and Eddi Reader. Tours abroad have taken him as far as Japan and Montreal and he has performed many of the major cello concertos with various orchestras.

Donald is a cello tutor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and he plays on an English cello by Thomas Dodd c.1815.

What is your most memorable concert? (either playing or listening)

When I had a horrendous memory slip playing Robot's March by Gordon Jacob in the Cowdray Hall, Aberdeen as a wee boy.

What quote or saying do you most overuse?

“Let's get into character...." (Pulp Fiction)

What item can you not live without?

My hiking boots.

What’s on your iPod, or what do you listen to in the car?

Tak by Sigur Ros

Tea or coffee?

Definitely tea, preferably Lapsang Souchong or perhaps a loose leaf sencha green tea

In a Hollywood film of your life, who would play you?

Anthony Hopkins

If you had to eat one type of food for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Sprouted lentils

Photo © Hal Hutchison