About
Noted for a “superbly voiced instrumental partnership of his singer” (Sussex Express) and “spectacular, sensitive and vivid accompaniment” (The Latest), George Ireland enjoys a thriving career, in demand both as a recital partner with some of the finest singers of his generation, and as a repetiteur in Opera and Choral music. From a working-class, non-musical home, he began to play the piano from scratch, self-taught at the age of 14. He is now 28 and recently graduated with distinction from the Royal College of Music where he studied collaborative piano under Simon Lepper and Roger Vignoles. He also studied conducting, continuo and vocal coaching.
In December 2022 he joined Rebecca Leggett for the London Song Festival Masterclass and British Art Song Competition with Sir Thomas Allen, who awarded them 1st prize. Earlier in 2022 he accompanied Oksana Lepska’s winning recitals at the National Mozart Competition in London, and they have enjoyed further performances together in London since. In both 2020 and 2021 he accompanied the winning recitals at the Kathleen Ferrier Awards, with Jessica Cale and Hugh Cutting respectively. With Jessica Cale has subsequently enjoyed performances across the UK, including as an Emerging Artist in the 2021 Oxford Lieder Festival, performing Strauss alongside Gwenneth Ann Rand and Simon Lepper; with Hugh Cutting he has enjoyed a live performance on Radio 3’s In Tune, recording at BBC’s Maida Vale Studios, a greatly-acclaimed recital at the Brighton Festival and a recital on the Harpsichord at the Theatre Grévin in Paris. He joined Tenor Michael Bell in the semi finals of the IVC Lied Duo competition in S-hertogenbosch in Autumn 2023.
He is a 2022-24 Oxford Song (formerly Oxford Lieder) Young Artist, having given two successful audition-recitals with Emily Christina Loftus and Caroline Taylor at the 2022 Spring Song festival. In this capacity has enjoyed two performances at the 2022 Festival, a Mastercourse with Mark Padmore, Julius Drake, Susan Manoff and Simon Lepper, and returned in April 2023, giving the closing recital in the Grimm Weekend of Song .
Photography by Peter Austin and Emma Brown.
As a 2019 Leeds Lieder Young Artist and elsewhere, George has participated in masterclasses with Roderick Williams, Sarah Connolly, Felicity Palmer, Ann Murray, Helmut Deutsch and Amanda Roocroft.
At the RCM he was involved in a project exploring the Lieder of emigre composer Robert Kahn, which saw performances at the German Embassy in London and the Akademie Der Künste in Berlin. He returned to Germany in September 2019, where his Bielefeld performance of Winterreise with Daniela Bechley was reviewed with great enthusiasm in Neue Westfälische:
“Those present experienced how the singer and pianist explored this dark and powerful cycle, and that two people had captured a timelessly significant masterpiece entirely in its essence. And that they had not only the musical class, but also the inner relationship to interpret the “Winterreise” movingly”.
As an undergraduate at the University of Birmingham he won the 2016 concerto competition and performed Grieg’s concerto with the University Symphony Orchestra. He was also much in demand as a recital accompanist, and in his final year enjoyed a masterclass with Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton, with whom he subsequently studied.
Equally at home In an operatic and choral capacity, he has enjoyed work with the youth companies of the Royal Opera House and Glyndebourne, and in 2018 he was selected as a repetiteur for British Youth Opera’s production of The Rake’s Progress under Lionel Friend. He has worked with Waterperry Opera Festival as repetiteur and performance pianist for Mansfield Park; with St Paul’s Opera on Carmen, and as accompanist for the Masterclass with David Butt Philip, and in summer 2023 joinedWest Green House Opera as repetiteur for Robinson Crusoe and Constanze. As an undergraduate he was for 3 years the repetiteur for the Summer Festival Opera (Albert Herring, The Beggar’s Opera and The Enchanted Pig). He was also appointed accompanist of the University Chorus under Julian Wilkins, and worked on occasion with Birmingham University Singers under Sir Simon Halsey. He has accompanied the auditions of Tenebrae, and is the accompanist of the East London Chorus, working regularly with Jessica Norton.
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