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A recipient of many honors for vocal accompaniment,
William Vann has performed and recorded as an accompanist to prominent singers and instrumentalists in Britain and beyond. He also has a flourishing career as a conductor and is the founder and artistic director of the London English Song Festival.
A native of Bedford, England,
Vann began his musical career as a chorister at King's College, Cambridge. He was a Music Scholar -- a student who receives financial support in return for participating in musical performances -- at the Bedford School.
Vann received a similar choral scholarship to attend Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he also studied piano with Peter Uppard. He went on for studies in accompaniment with
Malcolm Martineau and
Colin Stone at the Royal Academy. Prizes there and elsewhere helped launch his career as an accompanist; he won the Sir Henry Richardson Scholarship and the Hodgson Fellowship in piano accompaniment.
Vann also earned awards in competitions, including a prize at the Wigmore Hall Independent Opera International Song Competition, the Gerald Moore Award, and the Royal Overseas League Accompanists’ Award, among others.
Vann has accompanied major singers from around Britain and beyond; the list includes
Mary Bevan,
James Gilchrist, and
Roderick Williams, among many others. His instrumental partners have included the
Navarra Quartet and the
London Mozart Players, and he has performed concertos with the
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the
Academy of Ancient Music. As a solo pianist,
Vann has commissioned works from composers
Christian Alexander,
Ian Venables, and
Graham Ross, among others. He is active as a choral conductor and has served as the director of music at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, directing its
Royal Hospital Chapel Choir.
Vann has been a guest conductor of the
English Chamber Choir and has conducted and served as vocal coach at the Dartington and Oxenfoord International Summer Schools.
Vann has appeared on more than a dozen recordings as an accompanist, making his debut in 2013 with Njabulo Madlala on the recital Songs from Home. He conducted the
Royal Hospital Chapel Choir on the holiday album
Carols from Chelsea.
Vann has often performed the music of
Ralph Vaughan Williams and accompanied several leading singers on the Albion label's two volumes of English folk song settings, the
second of which appeared in 2021.