Malcolm Proud won first prize at the Edinburgh International Harpsichord Competition in 1982 after a year of study with Gustav Leonhardt. He is harpsichordist and organist with the Irish Baroque Orchestra and Camerata Kilkenny and performs with Chamber Choir Ireland, Resurgam and Sestina. His international career has included playing all six Brandenburg Concertos with Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s English Baroque Soloists at the BBC London Proms and the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, and he has worked with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Academy of Ancient Music, European Union Baroque Orchestra and Akademie für alte Musik Berlin. He has toured Japan in a production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo with Mark Padmore in the lead rôle.!

In 2018 he curated a series of concerts at the National Concert Hall in Dublin marking the 350th anniversary of François Couperin’s birth, and in 2022 he performed Book 1 of Bach’s ‘Well- tempered Clavier’ using both harpsichord and chamber organ at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, the Kilkenny Arts Festival and the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin marking the 300th anniversary of the appearance of this seminal work!

Malcolm Proud is Emeritus Organist at St Canice’s Cathedral Kilkenny and has given recitals on historic organs such as the 15th century instrument at Valère-Sion in Switzerland, the 1565 Antegnati in Mantua, the 1610 Compenius at Frederiksborg in Denmark and the 1766 Riepp at Ottobeuren near Munich. He has given organ recitals in Boston and Virginia. His cd recordings include Purcell’s Harpsichord music, Bach’s Six Partitas, the Goldberg Variations and (on organ) Clavierübung III. He has recorded Brandenburg 5 with both the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the English Baroque Soloists.

Malcolm Proud was born in Dublin where he studied piano with Elizabeth Huban, organ with David Lee and harpsichord with John Beckett. He graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 1971 with a Mus. B. He was a finalist in the 1980 Bruges International Harpsichord Competition and in 1982 he won first prize at the Edinburgh International Harpsichord Competition after a year of study with Gustav Leonhardt at the Sweelinck Conservatorium Amsterdam. In 1985 he was invited to perform Bach’s Art of Fugue with Gustav Leonhardt in Manchester and Oxford. He has also performed harpsichord concertos by C.P.E. Bach with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under the direction of Gustav Leonhardt in London and Birmingham.

Organist of St. Canice’s Cathedral in Kilkenny since 1985, Malcolm Proud has given recitals on many historic organs such as the 15th century instrument at Valère-Sion in Switzerland, the 1565 Antegnati in Mantua, the 1610 Compenius at Frederiksborg in Denmark and the 1766 Riepp at Ottobeuren in Germany. In the U.S.A. he has given organ recitals in Boston and Virginia. His CD of Bach’s Clavierübung III, recorded on the Metzler Organ at Stein am Rhein in Switzerland was released in 2008 on the Maya Recordings label.

Through much of his career Malcolm Proud combined his teaching work as a Lecturer on the Degree Course in Music at Waterford Institute of Technology with a busy international career as a soloist and continuo player performing at leading venues and major festivals throughout Ireland, the U.K., Europe, the U.S.A. and Japan.

In 2010 Malcolm Proud played Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos with Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s English Baroque Soloists at the BBC London Proms and the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Germany. He is principal harpsichordist with the Irish Baroque Orchestra and co-founder with Swiss violinist Maya Homburger of Camerata Kilkenny. Other leading period instrument groups with which he has performed include Chandos Baroque Players, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Academy of Ancient Music, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, the Gabrieli Consort and the European Union Baroque Orchestra. He has toured Japan in a Purcell Quartet production of Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo with Mark Padmore in the lead rôle and performed with the Chandos Baroque Players in the USA and Canada. He works regularly with Chamber Choir Ireland, Resurgam, Sestina, the Calmus Ensemble from Leipzig, as well as with Dutch soprano Lenneke Ruiten and Swedish soprano Maria Keohane.

Malcolm Proud has recorded over 30 CDs on many different labels including Maya Recordings, Meridian, Hyperion, Virgin, Deutsche Grammophon, RCA, EMI and Soli Deo Gloria. He has recorded Bach’s 5th Brandenburg Concerto with both the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the English Baroque Soloists. His solo recordings on the Maya Recordings Label include his critically acclaimed Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Bach’s Six Partitas for harpsichord as well as Bach’s Six Sonatas for violin and harpsichord and Biber’s Mystery sonatas with violinist Maya Homburger (‘Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik’ in 2007).

Leading singers and instrumentalists with whom he has performed are sopranos Maria Keohane, Lenneke Ruiten, Julianne Baird, Emma Kirkby, Lynn Dawson, Isabelle Poulenard and Nancy Argenta; counter-tenor Robin Blaize, Michael Chance and James Bowman; tenors John Elwes, John Mark Ainsley and Mark Padmore; bass-baritones Michael George, Maarten Koningsberger and Matthew Brook; violinists Maya Homburger, Pavlo Beznosiuk, Elizabeth Wallfisch, Rachel Podger, Bojan Čičič, Alison Bury, Adrian Butterfield and Nadja Zwiener; cellists Steven Isserlis, Richard Tunnicliffe, Sarah McMahon and David Watkin; bass viol players Sarah Cunningham, John Dornenburg and Nicholas Milne; flautists Wilbert Hazelzet, Lisa Beznosiuk, Sebastien Marc, Rachel Beckett and Rachel Brown and fellow harpsichordist Maggie Cole.

With his ensemble Camerata Kilkenny he has performed at all of Ireland’s leading music festivals and toured to Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany working with guest musicians and singers including sopranos Lenneke Ruiten and Maria Keohane, tenor Mark Padmore, bass-baritone Matthew Brook, baroque flautist Wilbert Hazelzet, baroque violinist Bojan Čičič and the Calmus Ensemble of Leipzig.

In the last few years Malcolm Proud has recorded several new CDs including works by Marin Marais and d’Anglebert with the American viola da gamba player John Dornenburg on the Centaur label; ‘The Piper and the Fairy Queen’ with Camerata Kilkenny and uilleann piper David Power on the RTE Lyric FM label; Bach arias and Swedish folk hymns with Camerata Kilkenny and the Swedish soprano Maria Keohane on the Maya Recordings label.

In November 2018 in the Kevin Barry Recital Room at the National Concert Hall in Dublin he curated a three concert series of vocal and instrumental music to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the birth of François Couperin. A similar three concert series on J.S. Bach, postponed from Spring 2020 because of the Covid 19 restrictions, will now take place in 2021.