William Vann is establishing himself at the forefront of the current generation of young British accompanists. He graduated with a distinction in the Postgraduate Piano Accompaniment Diploma at the Royal Academy of Music in 2007, having studied with Malcolm Martineau and Colin Stone, and in September 2008 won the prestigious Gerald Moore Award, judged by a panel headed by Graham Johnson. He is also a past winner of the Sir Henry Richardson Scholarship for accompanists; his work and studies are supported by the Geoffrey Parsons Memorial Trust.
Born in Bedford, he was a Chorister of King’s College, Cambridge, a Music Scholar at Bedford School, where he became an Associate of the Royal College of Organists, and a Choral Exhibitioner at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied Law and was awarded the first prize in a competition to compose a piece for the Queen’s Jubilee on behalf of the University.
Recent performances have included Dvorak with the Nephele Ensemble at St David’s Cardiff, evening recitals at St John’s, Smith Square and St George’s, Bristol playing a programme which included the first performance of eight pieces by Joseph Atkins, a staged performance of Schubert’s Winterreise at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, a reconstruction of Mendelssohn’s time spent with Queen Victoria in Trinity Chapel, Oxford and a guest appearance at the Hereford Summer School. He performed in the final of the Kathleen Ferrier Awards at Wigmore Hall in April 2007 and has been a Britten-Pears Young Artist for two consecutive years.
He has played in masterclasses given by Michael Dussek, Graham Johnson, Roger Vignoles, Julius Drake, Robin Bowman, Andrew West, Sue McCulloch, Sarah Walker, Richard Jackson, Richard Stokes, Robert Tear, and James Bowman and was the official accompanist for the Hampshire Singer of the Year in 2007 and 2008.
Forthcoming appearances include recitals with James Gilchrist at St Stephen’s Church, Gloucester Road, where he is Director of Music, a tour of Wales and the North-West of England with the Nephele Ensemble and a concert of part-songs by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Haydn in the Dulwich Subscription Concerts series.