Iain Ledingham

Equally at home in Opera, Recital Repertoire and Oratorio, Iain Ledingham coaches many singers at the Academy

In 1981 he joined the music staff of Glyndebourne Festival Opera and played harpsichord continuo in many performances of operas by Mozart and Rossini. Conductors he has worked with include Bernard Haitink, Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir Colin Davis, Roger Norrington Raymond Leppard and Trevor Pinnock, and he has accompanied many singers and instrumentalists in live and recorded recitals for BBC Radio Three.

From 2000-2003 he was Director of Opera at the Royal Academy of Music, responsible for planning and overseeing the Academy's highly successful new opera course, Royal Academy Opera. For RAO he has conducted Falstaff, Le Nozze di Figaro, La Finta Giardiniera, Alcina and Haydn's Il Mondo della Luna.

In 2003 he returned to full-time work as a coach and pianist. In collaboration with Royal Academy of Music Italian coach Dr Lella Alberg, he established an Italian Summer School which, over a period of 20 years, introduced over 200 Academy singers to the delights of performing Italian opera scenes in a very beautiful part of Liguria.

He lives in Buckinghamshire and founded the Amersham Festival of Music in 1984, which quickly became a popular and very successful event in the area. For 40 years he conducted the Festival's excellent professional orchestra in a wide range of concerts and directed many of Mozart's piano concertos from the keyboard.

From 2009-2018 he was musical director of the Academy's Bach Cantata series, giving nine concerts per year and performing over 200 Cantatas in the Dukes Hall. The series frequently attracted capacity audiences and was a deeply rewarding experience for all concerned.