In 1989 Ian Fountain became the youngest winner of the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Masters Competition in Tel Aviv at the age of 19. He began playing the piano at the age of five and he was a chorister at New College, Oxford. He continued his studies at Winchester College and at the Royal Northern College of Music, working with Robert Bottone and Sulamita Aronovsky. Since 2001 Ian Fountain has been a piano professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Ian has performed extensively throughout Europe, the USA, the Middle East and the UK, with orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Hallé, English Chamber Orchestra and London Philharmonic Orchestra. He has also worked with the Israel Philharmonic, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony, Utah Symphony and Singapore Symphony Orchestra.
Engagements in the recent past and in the near future include a complete Beethoven concerto cycle with Sinfonia ViVa, performances at the Prague Spring and Autumn Festival and the Chopin Festival in Marienbad, Czech Republic. In March 2005 he performed the Beethoven Triple Concerto in Warsaw in the Beethoven Festival and in July 2005 he appeared with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. The season highlight of his recital tours with cellist David Geringas is a complete cycle of Beethoven works for cello and piano at the Philharmonie in Berlin.
