Antoinette Kirkwood

Antoinette Adell Mahoney Kirkwood (26 February 1930 - 28 January 2014) was an English composer born in London, with Irish family connections. Early life Kirkwood studied music with Claud Biggs at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin, and then piano and composition with Dorothy Howell and cello with Paul Tortelier at the Royal Academy of Music in Westminster. She often accompanied her mother, the soprano Rome Lindsay. Career Radio Éireann broadcast Kirkwood’s Symphony, op. 8, composed in 1953. From 1957 until 1961, Kirkwood was the founder and conductor of the St Columba’s Orchestra, associated with St Columba’s Church, Pont Street. On 28 April 1960 the conductor Kathleen Merritt organized and conducted a Wigmore Hall concert of ‘Contemporary British Women Composers’, featuring music of Kirkwood alongside some of that of Ina Boyle, Ruth Gipps, Dorothy Howell, Elizabeth Maconchy, and Grace Williams. For four years beginning in 1969, Kirkwood was a member of the executive committee of the Composers’ Guild of Great Britain. Works Kirkwood composed orchestral concert works, theatre music and two ballet scores, as well as instrumental and chamber pieces (including a cello sonata an