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Born in Guelph in 1958, Andrew Paul MacDonald earned a Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition at The University of Michigan in 1985, where he studied with William Bolcom, William Albright, George Balch Wilson and Leslie Bassett.  For the past two decades his compositions have been winning prestigious prizes in Canada and abroad:  the 1997 International Clarinet Association Composition Competition, the du Maurier Arts Ltd. Canadian Composers Competition; the Aliénor Harpsichord Composition Award; the Sir Ernest MacMillan (three times the Gold), William St. Clair Low, and Rodolphe Mathieu Awards from SOCAN; the Omaha Symphony Guild New Music Competition; and the Triennial Washington Inter­national Competition for Composition for String Quartet, to name a few.  In both 1982 and 1983, MacDonald was a reci­pient of the Floyd S. Chalmers Fund Award from the Ontario Arts Council, and in 1989 was award­ed a three-year grant for composition-related research from the Québec government (Fonds FCAR).  His Violin Concerto  (recorded on the BIS label) won the 1995 Juno Award for “Best Classical Composition.”  Biographical articles on MacDonald are to be found in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2ed., 2001) and the Canadian Who's Who (annually since 1998).
 

MacDonald’s nearly seventy compositions have been performed across the country by such notable ensembles as the Toronto Symphony, l'Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the Esprit Orchestra, l'Orchestre symphonique de Québec, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, Symphony Nova Scotia, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the CBC Vancouver Orchestra, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, The Evergreen Club and the I Musici de Montréal.  He has had works commissioned by outstanding orchestras, chamber ensembles, solo performers, performance competitions (such as the 2000 Esther Honens Calgary International Piano Competition), and the Canadian Opera Company, receiving funding from the Canada Council, the Ministère des Affaires Culturelles de Québec, the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec, the Laidlaw Foundation and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.  His works are frequently broadcast on CBC and SRC, and have been performed in England, Norway, France, Germany, Holland, Taiwan, Turkey, the United States and Canada.  A number of his compositions have been recorded on eleven compact discs to date, on the Société Nouvelle d’Enregistrement (SNE), New Music Manitoba (NMM), CentreDiscs (CMC), Opening Day, Gasparo, ATMA and BIS (Sweden) labels, and are published by New Art Music Editions (Winnipeg) and Vierdreiunddreissig Musikverlag (Munich).  Vice-President and Council member of the Canadian League of Composers from 1993-97, and currently Artistic Director of Ensemble Musica Nova, MacDonald performs in concert as a classical and electric guitarist and as a conductor, and is chairman and professor of composition and electronic music at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Québec.