Darren Gallacher is a percussionist and multi-discipline performer. He has received a Master of Music in Performance with distinction from the Royal Northern College of Music, where he also won the RNCM Gold Medal Competition, and a First Class Bachelor of Music at Edinburgh Napier University. As a performer he enjoys a varied career working as a percussionist in many settings. He has worked with some of the country’s leading organisations including Scottish Opera, BBCSSO, The Hebrides Ensemble, The Halle, and is a past member of Sinfonia Cymru. He has extensive experience as a chamber musician, most notably being involved in two consecutive tours around China with the RNCM Percussion Sextet, where he and the group competed at the China National Percussion Competition winning first prize in the 2018 chamber music category. As a soloist Darren performs a wide range of repertoire and has recently collaborated with composers including Pierluigi Billone, Oscar Escudero and Belenish Moreno-Gil, Dave Maric, Annea Lockwood, Tree Burton, Alistair MacDonald, and Neil Tomas Smith. He is a founding member of Scottish new-music ensemble IPSA Collective and is committed to championing new and experimental music throughout Scotland.
Darren’s main expertise lies in the contemporary and experimental music fields and has a particular interest in exploring cross-disciplinary perspectives in performance presentation across different disciplines and the advantages these can bring to music performers and audiences. He is currently in the final stages of a PhD at the University of Glasgow under the supervision of Prof Nick Fells, Prof Björn Heile, and Dr Simon Murray between the school of Music and School of Theatre Studies which explores multifaceted approaches to presenting performance, challenging this through his practice as a percussionist. In expanding his existing training across other practices, specifically through the arts, he has developed a unique creative devising practice centred towards musical world building and audience engagement.
Darren was the 2022/23 recipient of the John Lunn Postgraduate Scholarship and previous recipient of the Harriet Cohen Memorial Music Award and scholarships from the Univeristy of Glasgow, Ann Driver trust, and Help Musicians UK. He is very grateful to the Clark (Mile-end) trust, The Hope Scott Trust, The Eula Dick Bequest and David and Rhona Nicol for their support.
