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.

Sophie Grimmer

Sophie has been working with the singing voice for 35 years as an international soloist, teacher, vocal consultant and voice pedagogy researcher.
Lead roles in opera include Minerva (Monteverdi), Dido, Agrippina, Clytemnestra (Gluck), Tamiri (Mozart), Mimi and Hannah (Birtwistle) at ENO (BBC), QEH/RFH (BBC), Aldeburgh Festival (BBC), Shakespeare’s Globe, Musica Festival (Strasbourg) and Banff Arts Centre (Canada), under conductors including Esa-Pekka Salonen, Laurence Cummings and Harry Christophers, with directors such as Stephen Langridge, Sir Peter Hall, Simon McBurney, Tim Carroll, Stephen Pimlott, David Freeman and Simon Callow.
Sophie has also performed lead singing roles in theatre including Katerina (NT, Complicite’s Out of a House); Lelio (Walt Disney Concert Hall/LA Philharmonic, Complicitie’s Strange Poetry); and Antigone (NT/Epidaurus, Oedipus Plays).
Solo recordings/broadcasts include Moodswings (Brodsky Quartet), Cavanna’s Messe, un jour ordinaire (IRCAM, Paris) and Gornick’s Do I Love You? (BFI/Channel 4). Sophie has sung many world premieres including works by Jonathan Harvey, Judith Weir (NT), Mark Anthony Turnage and George Aperghis.
Sophie is vocal professor at Trinity Laban Conservatoire (FHEA); guest artistic director of devised voicework at RADA; external examiner for conservatoires/competitions here and abroad (Guildhall, NCPA Mumbai); vocal consultant for voice training organisations (NYCGB, Ingenium Academy); award-winning voice pedagogy researcher (AHRC); and runs a private studio in London and Paris for professional singers.
Informed by her own training (RCM, Banff Opera as Theatre), her performing career and a continuing exploration of related embodiment practices, Sophie brings extensive somatic expertise to her singing teaching. Enabling a deep kinaesthetic attunement to all areas of the work, Sophie is a trained biodynamic craniosacral therapist (Body Intelligence) and Scaravelli yoga teacher (Diane Long). Dedicated to helping singers discover the truth of their own creative expression, empowering them to develop vocal freedom and resilience, she brings the experience of an embodied fluid breath to the forefront of all processes of enquiry.

Joan Rodgers

Joan Rodgers, one of the leading sopranos of her generation achieved international recognition in the fields of opera, concert and recital.

She has appeared with conductors including Solti, Barenboim, Mehta, Harnoncourt, Mackerras, Ashkenazy, Salonen and Rattle and has been a regular guest at the BBC Proms. Operatic highlights have included engagements at the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Opera North and Glyndebourne in Britain, Paris, Munich, Brussels, Amsterdam and Vienna in Europe, and the Metropolitan Opera, New York. Joan also appeared in concert and recital throughout Europe and the USA including London, Paris, Vienna, Amsterdam, Moscow, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Her recordings include Mozart’s da Ponte trilogy with Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin Philharmonic, The Turn of the Screw (Virgin), solo discs of Tchaikovsky, Mozart and Wolf (Hyperion), The Creation (Philips), Rachmaninov songs with Howard Shelley (Chandos) and Shostakovich Seven Romances on Verses by Alexander Blok with the Beaux Arts Trio (Warner Classics) and a recording of songs by Prokofiev, Mussorgsky, Shostakovich and Britten (Hyperion).

Joan Rodgers received the Royal Philharmonic Society award as Singer of the Year for 1997, the 1997 Evening Standard Award for outstanding performance in opera for her performance as The Governess in the Royal Opera’s production of The Turn of the Screw and in July 2005 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Liverpool University. Joan Rodgers was awarded the CBE in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List

She enjoys working with young singers and gives regular masterclasses in the UK and abroad..

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.

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.