The Belfast-born flautist James Galway will be honoured in his native city on Saturday.
In a life that has taken him around the world’s great concert halls, Galway looks out from the sixth floor of Ulster University on York Street on to a rain-sodden Belfast, just hundreds of metres away from where he was born on Vere Street.
“It was up by the side of the Gallagher’s tobacco factory. That’s all gone now, of course. We used to go in there to see what we could find, until our dads caught us,” remembers the 85-year-old with a smile.
Vere Street, a flashpoint during the early years of the Troubles, no longer exists, having been demolished as part of an urban regeneration project. But Galway’s ties to the city remain.
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On Saturday he will receive an honorary doctorate from Ulster University in recognition of his “extraordinary contribution to classical music, his international artistic influence, and his enduring connection to the city of his birth”, the citation reads.
Having sold 30 million albums, Galway has now been asked to share his extensive archives with the Library of Congress in Washington. Galway, however, wants the trove to be shared with his home city: “That would be my dream,” he says.
The Library of Congress is keen to have them and has already sent one of its archivists to Lucerne to begin the mammoth task of cataloguing a life in classical music at the highest levels.
However, Galway is determined, if there is local interest, in seeing that they will be made available in his home city too. He left Belfast when he was just 16, but he stayed in contact with it throughout the decades.
“I don’t think I would be where I am at the minute if it was not for the people of Belfast, because they gave me a grounding in music, and it wasn’t anything fancy,” he says.
Stories follow about the Onward flute band and the 39th Old Boys, who played borrowed or gifted instruments. “We took it all seriously,” says Galway, who has lived in Lucerne in Switzerland for decades with his wife, fellow flautist Jeanne.
The names of long-dead names who shaped his early life – one that took him to Berlin Philharmonic in the days of Herbert von Karajan and to countless concert halls – fill the conversation.
One day Galway and his friends found a record shop called Atlantic Records tucked away on High Street, “a tiny little cubbyhole with no windows” run by Belfast-born Solomon Lipschitz, “but everybody called him Solly”.
Lipschitz asked they boys what instruments they played. Told they all played the flute, he found a record of the Berlin Philharmonic “playing variations by Hindesmith on a theme of Weber’s”.
The piece has a fine flute solo. Lipshitz played it through and asked the boys what they thought of it. Preferring the simpler flute tunes of Belfast’s bands, the boys gave it the thumbs down.
Despite their ignorance, Lipschitz let them return every week, playing a few classical records each time, educating them about music, Galway remembers fondly.
An exhibition of Galway’s life and work is on display in Ulster University, including the unmarked musical scores that have peppered his life, such as the soundtrack for Lord of the Rings.
Unlike the majority of musicians, Galway’s scores are unmarked because he has always learned his pieces off by heart – a legacy of the gruelling trained received at the Paris Conservatoire.
The competitive streak was there from the beginning, he says, remembering when he was just 10 entering the solo flute category for the under 10s, the under 15s and the open competitions in a church hall competition. He won all of them.
The Paris study came after he had won a scholarship aged just 16 to go to the Royal College of Music – a journey made possible by the help of a couple from Sheffield living in Belfast: Dougie and Muriel Dawn.
Paying back, Galway has been deeply involved with the Belfast Youth Orchestra and Northern Ireland’s Youth Orchestra, along with offering a guiding hand to local talent, including the pianist Michael McHale.
“There’s a new generation to come who are doing interesting things ... There is a lot of new talent coming up,” he says.
“If it wasn’t for the people who helped me back then, I don’t think I would be anywhere near what I am today, or would have led the life that I have led,” he says.
The couple will spend much of the next week in Ireland, including a day, or two of rest at a country hotel before a trip to Dublin to join in the 75th celebrations in Dublin of an old friend, Bill Whelan, the composer of Riverdance.
Asked about the honorary degree, Galway says with a chuckle: “I did not have any expectations of this, so I was surprised. But I’m absolutely dead pleased.”
