Spotlight: Alexander Shelley

Being the son of two acclaimed concert pianists – Howard Shelley and Hilary Macnamara – Alexander Shelley’s choice of career shouldn’t have surprised anyone. Except, perhaps his parents when he decided to follow his grandmother and take up the cello.

‘On the one hand it was an inevitability, but my parents didn’t push. They made sure I had broader interests and knew, because of the commitment it takes, that music had to be my choice.’  

The urge to conduct he attributes to cassettes he would listen to when falling asleep as a child, drawing him ever closer to ‘the instrument of the orchestra with its endlessly varying and varied colours and ability to tell stories’.

Since his beginnings ‘waving my arms around to music’ in his bedroom, Shelley’s conducting career has come a considerable way. Success in the 2005 Leeds Conductors Competition announced an exciting new talent who was soon in demand around the world.

His appointment as National Symphony Orchestra Ireland’s new Principal Conductor Designate, taking up the role of Principal Conductor in September 2026, adds to a growing list of orchestras he has long and fruitful relationships with. Currently Music Director of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, Artistic and Music Director of the Florida-based Artis–Naples and Principal Associate Conductor with London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, in 2026 he will assume the Artistic and Music Directorship of the Pacific Symphony in California.

‘To me, building a deep relationship with an orchestra and an audience,’ he says, ‘is the most rewarding thing a conductor can do.’ 

Having made guest appearances in Dublin over the past decade and more, Shelley considers National Symphony Orchestra Ireland’s strengths to be ‘their speed and flexibility, great musicianship, and the openness with which they respond to new ideas. They can deliver absolutely first-class performances across the broadest of repertoire’.

The new role is something of a homecoming. His mother, whose parents were Macnamaras from Limerick and O’Gradys from Mayo, grew up in Dún Laoghaire and went to school in Monkstown.

The association doesn’t end there: his mother’s cousin, Moya, married Michael O’Doherty, an architect for the last redevelopment of the Hall in the late 1970s. ‘It’s one of the many reasons,’ he says, ‘this appointment feels personal’.

Now, as the Hall nears the next stage of its growth, Shelley sees it as ‘an exciting opportunity to play in other venues and to reach new communities and audiences’.

Starting as he means to go on, his two concerts this season range far and wide, beginning with Schumann’s secular oratorio and concert hall rarity, Das Paradies und die Peri. 

‘Schumann is very close to my heart and this has been on my “to do” list for some time. The blend of early Romantic, Germanic musical language and an exotic, mythical Persian fable sublimely works. That it’s based on Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh, seems like serendipity.’

His very different second concert collides John Adams, Rachmaninov and Stravinsky to illustrate how music speaks across time and borders.

‘It’s going to be an evening of fireworks. The bright streak of light of the Adams piece is a nod to America’s 250th anniversary of independence in 2026, the Stravinsky is a phenomenal score, and the soloist for the Rachmaninov, Jaeden Izik-Dzurko, is a fabulous pianist.’

For Shelley, the concert hall is ‘an entirely safe, shared space to explore experiences that can be joyful, challenging, transcendental and everything in between. Particularly in our times, it has enormous cultural, human value and  relevance to all generations.

As to what his future with National Symphony Orchestra Ireland might hold, he says: ‘I want to add value to the life and soul of the orchestra, and to classical music in Ireland; for there to be a sharing of passion. It would feel like I’m giving back to my home country’.