Paul Kildea

Paul Kildea is an award-winning conductor and the author of the acclaimed biography 'Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century', published by Penguin in 2013 and described by the Financial Times as "unquestionably the music book of the year".

Kildea holds an honours degree in piano performance and a masters degree in musicology from The University of Melbourne, where he is now an Honorary Principal Fellow.

He completed a doctorate at Oxford University in 1997, which OUP published in 2002 as 'Selling Britten: Music and the Market Place'. OUP also published 'Britten on Music' (2003), Kildea’s annotated edition of Britten’s complete writings on music alongside selected transcriptions of radio and television interviews. Kildea has written widely on music and social history in the twentieth century, contributing chapters to 'Rethinking Britten' (OUP, 2013), 'Britten’s Century' (Bloomsbury, 2013), 'A Musical Eye' (Artists’ Choice Editions, 2012), 'The Proms: A New History' (Thames & Hudson, 2007), and 'The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten' (CUP, 1999). Recognized internationally as a major Britten scholar and a perceptive writer on the social history of English music, Kildea is frequently a commentator on television and radio, where his work has also been extensively profiled. He is a frequent guest lecturer throughout the world, giving keynotes and lecture recitals in academic conferences and public series in places as diverse as Moscow, Oxford, London, Leeds, Illinois, New York, Aldeburgh and Edinburgh.

Kildea trained as a conductor at Opera Australia where in 1997 he was a member of the Young Artist Programme, debuting with Janáček’s 'The Cunning Little Vixen'. He has returned often to Opera Australia and has conducted throughout Australia and Europe, including guest appearances with the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble 2e2m (Paris), Nash Ensemble (London), West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Victorian Opera, Australian Youth Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Britten–Pears Orchestra.

In 1999 he was appointed Head of Music at the Aldeburgh Festival in Suffolk, which Britten co-founded in 1948, where he conducted and programmed a broad repertory. Kildea directed the chamber music programme at the Perth International Arts Festival and is a former Artistic Director of both London’s Wigmore Hall and the Four Winds Festival on the South Coast of New South Wales. Kildea continues to write for both specialist and non-specialist readerships. In 2017 Penguin will publish his new book 'Chopin’s Piano: A Path through the Romantic Century'.