Nick Pritchard & Ian Tindale
Biography Nick Pritchard & Ian Tindale
Nick Pritchard
is fast gaining recognition for his performances of the music of Bach and, in particular, his interpretation of the Evangelist in the Passions. Described as a ‘Masterly Evangelist’ in The Guardian, he has sung the role in Bach’s St John Passion and St Matthew Passion around the world, and his recording of the St John Passion for Deutsche Grammophon with Sir John Eliot Gardiner was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance (2023). This season sees him performing Bach with Les Arts Florissants (Paul Agnew), the Tonkünstler Orchestra (Stefan Gottfried), Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra (Peter Whelan), Arcangelo (Jonathan Cohen), the Academy of Ancient Music (Laurence Cummings) and at the Thomaskirche Leipzig as part of the Bachfest Leipzig (Andreas Reize). Other highlights include Messiah with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and Haydn’s The Creation under Václav Luks with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
Also highly regarded as a recitalist, Nick is Artist in Residence with the Temple Music Foundation in September 2025, performing three concerts including Die schöne Müllerin with Julius Drake, a lute song recital with Elizabeth Kenny and Handel’s Acis and Galatea with the Early Opera Company under Christian Curnyn. He will also perform Die schöne Müllerin with James Baillieu at the Two Moors Festival.
He celebrates the release of his debut recital album in 2025 for the Signum label, titled Little Wanderer, with his long-term collaborative partner Ian Tindale. The album includes songs by Benjamin Britten, Imogen Holst and the first recording of Daniel Kidane’s Songs of Illumination, commissioned for him by Leeds International Song. He made his Edinburgh International Festival debut in recital with Ian in 2023, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 3. He has also given recitals with Simon Lepper, Sholto Kynoch, Christopher Glynn, Graham Johnson and Malcolm Martineau, with performances at Wigmore Hall, Oxford International Song Festival, and at Ryedale, Aldeburgh and Lammermuir Festivals.
Other recent concert highlights include Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang with the OAE conducted by Sir András Schiff, George Benjamin’s Written on Skin (John/Angel 3) with the Finnish Radio Symphony conducted by the composer, Britten’s St Nicolas for the Aldeburgh Festival in a recreation of the first concert given at the festival in 1948, his Japanese debut with the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra under Masato Suzuki and and Bach Passions (Evangelist) with the Residentie Orkest (Richard Egarr), Stavanger Symphony (Masato Suzuki) and Irish Baroque (Peter Whelan). He also toured Handel’s L’allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato and Bach’s B Minor Mass in North America with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra (Dinis Sousa), including two performances at Carnegie Hall.
A fine actor and equally at home on the operatic stage, he most recently performed the role of Funeral Director in a new production by Oliver Mears of Bernstein’s A Quiet Place for the Linbury Theatre, Royal Ballet and Opera, as well as making his debut at Park Avenue Armory in a world premiere co-commission with the Asia Society, performing a selection of Bach cantatas staged by Peter Sellars. Other opera roles have included Oronte (Alcina) in a new Tim Albery production for Opera North, Lysander (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) at the Aldeburgh Festival, Tamino (Die Zauberflöte) for Glyndebourne on Tour and Irish National Opera, Ferrando (Così fan tutte) for Opera Holland Park, Amphinomus (The Return of Ulysses) for the Royal Ballet and Opera, and Purcell’s The Indian Queen for the Opéra de Lille, Théâtre de Caen, Opera Vlaanderen and Grand Théâtre Luxembourg. A regular performer of new music, he created the role of Matthew in Mark Simpson’s Pleasure (Opera North, Aldeburgh).
He has performed with ensembles including Ensemble Pygmalion, Concerto Köln, Les Talens Lyriques, Les Violons du Roy, L’Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, English Concert, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Gabrieli Consort and Britten Sinfonia (BBC Proms debut, Mozart Requiem under David Bates). He has worked under conductors including Harry Bicket, John Butt, Maxim Emelyanychev, Adam Fischer, Emmanuelle Haïm, Simon Halsey, George Petrou, Christophe Rousset, Raphaël Pichon, and Ryan Wigglesworth.
Ian Tindale
‘A wonderfully responsive and assured pianist’ (The Telegraph), Ian Tindale is increasingly in demand as a specialist in song repertoire and chamber music. His recital partners have included leading song performers Ailish Tynan, Roderick Williams, James Gilchrist and Robin Tritschler, and his performances have taken him to Europe, North America and across the UK. Highlights in the 2023-4 season include recitals at the Hay Festival with Soraya Mafi and with Nick Pritchard at Edinburgh International Festival (both recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3), Oxford International Song Festival with Harriet Burns to launch a new Schubert disc with Delphian, and the commencement of a new role as Official Pianist for the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels.
Concert highlights in past seasons have included a recital tour throughout Europe with baritone and ECHO Rising Star Josep-Ramon Olivé in venues including Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, and Palau de la Música, Barcelona in the 2018-19 season; a programme with baritone and former BBC New Generation Artist James Newby for Lewes Festival of Song; and Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich songs for English Touring Opera and Marquee Arts TV in which Ian was hailed as an ‘articulate and sensitive partner’ (Opera Today). In 2022 Iain Burnside invited Ian to curate and perform in the Ludlow English Song Festival Day at the Wigmore Hall; Ian was joined by Ailish Tynan, Robin Tritschler, Elgan Thomas, Harriet Burns, Rosalind Ventris and Adam Walker for ‘Hiraeth’, a programme celebrating contemporary and historic Celtic composers.
Ian has formed several fruitful collaborative partnerships in the last decade, most significantly with soprano Harriet Burns, and together they have garnered a reputation for immersive song programmes through performances at the International Lied Festival Zeist, Vrienden van het Lied, Oxford International Song Festival, and at the Ryedale Festival. Their debut disc of Schubert Lieder together with Delphian will be released in early 2024. Ian also has a long-standing performing relationship with tenor Nick Pritchard, with whom he gave the world premiere of Daniel Kidane’s Songs of Illumination in 2018 at Leeds Lieder. Ian returned to the Oxford International Song Festival with Nick for a sold-out late-night programme of Finzi, Gurney and Clarke in October 2022. Their acclaimed recital of Britten, Faure and Poulenc at the 2023 Edinburgh International Festival was broadcast by BBC Radio 3 in January 2024.
Ian is Artistic Director of Shipston Song, an annual song festival on the edge of the Cotswolds which he founded in 2022, and 2023 saw Roderick Williams, Helen Charlston and Laurence Kilsby join him and four Shipston Song Rising Stars for an immersive weekend of performances and masterclasses entitled ‘I sang it under the wild wood tree’.
As a chamber musician, most recently Ian has partnered Belgian clarinettist Annelien van Wauwe in recitals at Ryedale Festival and on BBC Radio. Ian is also a member of Ensemble Kopernikus, whose recent recording projects include the first two discs in a planned series of recordings exploring the chamber music and solo piano repertoire of Percy Hilder Miles for MPR.
Ian is a graduate of Selwyn College, Cambridge, and the Royal College of Music in London, where he continues to work as a pianist and coach. In 2017 Ian was awarded the Pianist’s Prize in the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation Song Competition and has also won accompaniment prizes at the Kathleen Ferrier Awards, Royal Overseas League Music Competition, Gerald Moore Award and Maggie Teyte Competition. He is a Britten Pears Young Artist and a Samling Artist; Ian has performed at the Wigmore Hall Samling Showcase a number of times after being selected as a Samling Artist in 2014, and he continues to work as a pianist and coach for Samling Academy.
