Alan Hacker
Alan Ray Hacker OBE FRAM (30 September 1938 – 16 April 2012) was an English clarinettist, conductor and music professor. Born in Dorking, Surrey, he was the son of Kenneth and Sybil Hacker. He studied at Dulwich College and the Royal Academy of Music, where he won the Dove Prize and the Boise Travelling Scholarship, funding study in Paris, Bayreuth and Vienna. In 1958 he joined the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 1960 he became a professor at the Royal Academy of Music. He helped found the Pierrot Players in 1965 with Stephen Pruslin and Harrison Birtwistle, which later became the Fires of London in 1972; Hacker performed with them until 1976. In 1971 he founded the group Matrix. He also served as chairman of the ICA Music Section and of the British section of the International Society for Contemporary Music. He is credited with reviving the basset clarinet and, in 1967, restored Mozart’s Concertos and Quintet, playing on an instrument modeled after Mozart’s original Stadler extended basset clarinet. He founded the Music Party in 1972 to promote authentic classical performance, and helped establish the Classical Orchestra in York to perform on original instruments. He conducted opera ranging from Monteverdi to Birtwistle and taught at Leeds University (Sir Robert Mayer lecturer, 1972–73) and the University of York (lecturer and senior lecturer, 1976–1987). He was awarded the OBE in 1988 and appeared on Desert Island Discs in 1994.
Personal life: Hacker married three times. His first wife, Anna Maria Sroka, bore two daughters, Katy and Sophie, in 1959. His second wife, Karen Wynne Evans, gave him a son, Alcuin, in 1976. His third wife, Margaret Lee, survived him, along with his children and the first two wives. He died in Malton, North Yorkshire, at the age of 73.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 22:35 (CET).