John Flinders

Inspired to specialise in the art of accompaniment by his studies at the University of York and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, John Flinders now has a busy and wide-ranging career as soloist, accompanist, coach and teacher, and has performed in Croatia, France, Japan, Turkey and South America.

In London he has played at the Barbican Centre, Cadogan Hall, the Hackney Empire, Milton Court, the Royal Festival Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Purcell Room and St. John’s, Smith Square; he has also appeared on BBC TV, ITV, Radio 3 and Classic FM. His performances as a soloist have included Constant Lambert’s The Rio Grande, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Grieg’s Piano Concerto and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto no. 2 in C minor; in 2014 he featured as piano soloist on the soundtrack of the major ITV series The Great War: The People’s Story, and in 2022 he gave the world première of the Piano Concerto no. 1 by Leigh O’Hara. John is particularly noted for his performances of the clarinet repertoire; he has worked with many of this country’s leading clarinettists and his recordings have been acclaimed by the Sunday Times, Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine and the American Record Guide. He also has a strong affinity with the classical song repertoire and in 2008 he and Veronica Veysey Campbell created the Aberystwyth MusicFest Vocal Course, which took place most summers from then until 2022. Another of John’s enthusiasms is the spoken word; he has portrayed the Voice of God in Britten’s Noye’s Fludde, and has been the narrator in works as diverse as Martin Butler’s Dirty Beasts, Paul Harvey’s Three Billy Goats Gruff and a concert version of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

John is an accompanist in the Junior and Senior Departments of the Guildhall School and also gives classes in interpretation and duo playing there. He became the accompanist for the Pink Singers, Europe’s longest-running LGBTQ+ chorus, in 2011 and has given concerts with them in Belgium, Iceland, India, Ireland, the Netherlands and Portugal; in 2018 he conducted the choir in several concerts at the Various Voices Festival in Munich and his plans for 2023 include performances with them in London and Italy to celebrate the choir’s 40th anniversary.