Course Tutors
Ashley Dean
Ashley Dean trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. His productions include: The Cunning Little Vixen (Royal Academy of Music), Iolanta (Operosa Opera Festival, Montenegro), Sãvitri, Blond Eckbert, Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon, Docteur Miracle, Hans Werner Henze’s Phaedra and Ein Landarzt, The Long Christmas Dinner, A Dinner Engagement (Guildhall School of Music and Drama), Lucia di Lammermoor (Clonter Opera), Carmen (Scottish Opera), Le Nozze di Figaro, Cosi Fan Tutte, La Clemenza di Tito, Ariadne auf Naxos, Benjamin Britten’s Phaedra (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland), L’incoronazione di Poppea, Trouble in Tahiti (Royal Danish Opera Academy), Albert Herring (Co.Opera Co.), Night Pieces – Jerwood Project (Glyndebourne/LPO), Twist and Shout (Il Palchetto – tour of Italy), The House of Bernarda Alba, The Dog Beneath the Skin (Cockpit Theatre, London), Hell and High Water, The Last Resort (Winner of Artistic Excellence Award – Mobarak Festival, Tehran) and A Christmas Carol (Strangeface Theatre, UK and International tours).
Ashley has worked on many opera productions by directors including Richard Jones, Nicholas Hytner, Graham Vick, David McVicar, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Nikolaus Lehnhoff and Deborah Warner. He has been on the directing staff at Glyndebourne, Garsington and English National Opera, and has revived productions in Chicago, Los Angeles and New Zealand.
Ashley regularly works with young singers in music conservatoires and young artist programmes in the UK and abroad including the Royal College of Music, the Royal Academy of Music, Oslo National Academy of the Arts, and the Royal Danish Opera Academy. He has led workshops for Voices of South Africa, British Youth Opera and the Jette Parker Young Artists at the Royal Opera House, London.
Michael Harper
Michael Harper is a singer, vocal consultant and singing teacher. He has sung opera, oratorio, and new music in the US, Europe and in China, premiering new works in the UK, Venice, and Geneva.
As a vocal consultant, he has given master classes, workshops and lectures for the Centre for Performance Research (Aberystwyth), the Asolo Song Festival and Institute for Song Interpretation (Italy), The National Foundation for Youth Music, Sing Up, The Sage Gateshead (Newcastle), Jackdaws Music Education Trust (Somerset), Guildhall School of Music and Drama, The Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon), the National Opera Studio (London), the Royal Northern College of Music (Manchester), various US universities including Westminster Choir College (Princeton) where he worked with the Grammy-nominated Williamson Voices, and the British Library, where he held an Edison Fellowship.
He has curated recitals for the London Song Festival and for Steinway Hall on the songs of African American and Black British Composers, and directed a tribute to the Fisk Jubilee Singers as part of the Hull City of Culture, 2016
He teaches singing at the Royal Northern School of Music in Manchester and has private studios in London, Bristol, and at the den Norske Opera in Oslo. He is trustee of the Saga Trust (Edison Fellowship, British Library) and a Patron for the National Opera Studio’s Diverse Voices programme.
Adrian Thompson
London-born Adrian Thompson is an artist of extraordinary versatility with a wide-ranging opera, concert and recital repertoire of works from the Renaissance to Contemporary music periods.
His recent opera appearances have included Skuratov (The House of the Dead) and Canio (I Pagliacci) for Opera Frankfurt; Florestan (Fidelio) for Welsh National Opera, Albert Gregor (The Makropoulos Case) and Midas (Die Liebe der Danae) for Garsington Opera; as well as concert performances as Grigory (Boris Godunov) at The Brighton Fesitval and Bacchus (Ariadne auf Naxos) at the Barbican, London. He has also performed with Glyndebourne; The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; English National Opera; Scottish Opera; Badisches Staatstheater; Staatstheater Stuttgart; Staatstheater Darmstadt; Théâtre des Champs Elysées; New Israel Opera; Netherlands Opera; Opera Zuid; and at many Festivals including Buxton, Wexford, Lausanne and Göttingen.
Adrian Thompson has performed with all the major British orchestras and ensembles and his overseas engagements have taken him to Australia, North America, Japan, Russia and the Baltic States as well as Europe and Scandinavia. During his career he has worked with many of the distinguished Early Music conductors – Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Trevor Pinnock, Harry Christophers and Philippe Herreweghe. No stranger to the contemporary music repertoire, he has performed Lutoslawski’s Paroles Tisées, recorded Judith Wier’s A Night at the Chinese Opera and given many premieres of works by British and European composers.
A very experienced recitalist, Adrian Thompson has made many appearances at the Wigmore Hall and at Festivals in the UK and Europe with pianists Graham Johnson, Iain Burnside, Roger Vignoles and harpist Ossian Ellis. He has recorded discs of works by Vaughan-Williams and Gurney, a volume in the acclaimed Complete Schubert Edition for Hyperion, Warlock’s The Curlew and Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin. He also appears on Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Vaughan-Williams’s The Pilgrim’s Progress and Sir John in Love and a recording of Händel’s Rodelinda. His discography also includes Britten’s Serenade, Les Illuminations and Nocturne, Mendelssohn’s Lobegesang and Busoni’s Rondo Arlechinesco.
Fourth tutor to be confirmed shortly
Course pianists
Grace Carter
Grace Carter began her studies as a Pianist at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland specialising in Vocal Accompaniment, later studying as a Repetiteur on the Opera Course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Having spent her initial studies working so frequently with singers, she began her own training as a soprano at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and subsequently the Dutch National Opera Academy, receiving an International Opera Awards Bursary in 2015. She has performed most recently at the Dutch National Opera, the Oxford Lieder Festival, Mozarthaus- Vienna, Musiekgebouw aan t’Ij – Amsterdam and the Britten Pears Young Artist programme at Snape Matings. Grace was a recording artist with Deutsche Grammophon, Paris for an album of operas arranged for five female voices.
Grace is based in South East London and is now working as a vocal coach combining her experience as both a singer and pianist. She has worked with young artists for British Youth Opera, the Festival Lyrique de Belle-Ile-en-Mer and is a regular accompanist for the International Opera Awards Young Artist masterclasses.
Marc Verter
Marc Verter is a pianist, song accompanist and vocal coach. Marc was the artistic director for over five years at the Chelsea Schubert Festival. Alongside his performing work Marc is a highly sought after vocal coach and repetiteur. Previous opera engagements have included Aix en Provence festival, Opera pa Skeret programme in Sweden, the Dartington festival in the UK and the double bill for Opera Pegasus in 2023. He is currently on staff as a vocal coach at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, the Mediterranean Opera Studio and Festival in Sicily and accompanist for the Jette Parker Aritsts Programme in the Royal Opera House. He has performed at music festivals in Israel, North America and Europe and has played for such internationally renowned singers as Yvonne Kenny, Jonathan Lemalu, Nelly Miricioiu, Kate Royal, Sarah Walker and Chen Reiss. He curated a salon concert series recreating the glamour of 19th century European musical soirees. Recordings include recital with soprano Ilona Domnich (Quartz), Robert Franz lieder (MPR), Piano pieces by Tamara Konstantin (Naxos) and songs by holocaust survivor and reemerging composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg with bass-baritone Mark Glanville ( Challenge – release expected 2026).
For more information please visit marcvertor.com and lesalonmusical.co.uk.
Chad Vindin
Born in Australia, Chad studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music before moving to London to study with Malcolm Martineau and Michael Dussek at the Royal Academy of Music. From there, Chad was awarded the position of Lord & Lady Lurgan Junior Fellow in Accompaniment at the Royal College of Music, before taking up a position as regular vocal coach at the Royal Academy of Music.
Chad has been awarded many prizes, including the accompanist prize at the Royal Overseas League Competition, the Ludmilla Andrew Russian Song Accompanist Prize at the Royal Academy of Music, and the Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards Accompanist’s Prize at the Wigmore Hall.
Chad performs regularly as a recitalist with the Royal Overseas League, The Tait Memorial Trust, and the popular Debut Opera series, based in Shoreditch. He has worked with Grange Festival Opera, Bergen National Opera, Bury Court Opera, Opera UpClose. He is regular staff pianist at Malcolm Martineau’s annual Oxenfoord International Summer School for Singers and Accompanists in Scotland, and toured with Manchester Collective performing Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, in a new English translation. He is currently the assistant conductor for The Grange Festival’s production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Yeoman of The Guard.