Composer James MacMillan has said he is “totally delighted” at being knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.
The 55-year-old has been awarded the honour for services to music.
Dr MacMillan’s music is widely performed around the world by performers ranging from top international orchestras to local church and community choirs.
One of his compositions was a new choral piece which was sung when Pope Benedict XVI conducted mass at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow in 2010.
Commenting on his knighthood, the composer said: “I am totally delighted to receive this honour. I am especially pleased that the world of music, and contemporary composition in particular, will receive greater focus and recognition as a result.
“I feel encouraged and re-energised in my commitments in these fields and especially in my work with the new festival in Ayrshire, The Cumnock Tryst.”
Born in Kilwinning in North Ayrshire, Dr MacMillan studied music at Edinburgh and Durham universities.
After working as a music lecturer at Manchester University he returned to Scotland and settled in Glasgow.
His composing career was launched with the successful premieres in 1990 of Tryst at the St Magnus Festival in Orkney and The Confession of Isobel Gowdie at the BBC Proms.
His percussion concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel was premiered by Evelyn Glennie in 1992 and has since been performed almost 500 times.
His music has strong Scottish roots, inflected with folk music and Gaelic psalmody, while his festival, The Cumnock Tryst, sets out to bring active music-making back to the area in Ayrshire where he grew up.
Over the past decade he has completed commissions for New York City Ballet, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, BBC Proms, Welsh National Opera, London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
His music has been featured at the Edinburgh, Bergen, Queensland Biennial, Aspen, Vancouver, Cabrillo and Grafenegg festivals, and at a BBC MacMillan weekend in London which included more than 25 of his works.
Plans for The Cumnock Tryst’s second festival in Ayrshire this October will be announced next Tuesday.