MacMillan studied composition at the University of Edinburgh, and pursued graduate study at Durham University with John Casken. He has received commissions from the London and Boston Symphony Orchestras, and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, among many other ensembles and artists. MacMillan is an active conductor, having served as Composer-Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic from 2000-2009, as well as recent appearances as guest conductor with the London, Danish National, Baltimore, and New Zealand symphony orchestras.

James MacMillan recounts his joy, as a young boy growing up in rural Ayrshire, Scotland, at receiving the gift of a recorder at the age of 9. The gift was a pivotal inspiration. “As soon as it became feasible for me to play an instrument, I wanted to write something for it, too: which I did, within days...Really I was just crazy for music, I knew the whole Ring cycle by the time I was 11.”

MacMillan is at once a devout Roman Catholic, and Scottish--a complex duality in a country that is, historically, staunchly Protestant--identities that have deeply inspired MacMillan’s music. MacMillan writes about the specific influences of the present work, A Meditation on Iona, in his own description:

This work came about through a collaborative experiment with the sculptress Sue Jane Taylor. It is a pensive and reflective work for strings and percussion lasting about fifteen minutes, and is mostly slow and static. It is built around a few recurrent melodic motives which revolve in a cyclic and episodic structure. Sometimes the material is very simple, like a single tolling metallic sound accompanied by slowly shifting chords, or a fragmented and hesitant solo violin or viola accompanied by patiently evolving clusters and chords. Sometimes, the material is more assertive involving trills, tremolandi and glissandi and low heavy chords with primally simple percussive ideas.

The whole is intended to give an impression of the island of Iona where St. Columba lived, and died in 597. It is a place of stark and desolate beauty, a focus of deep spiritual resonance and historical significance.