Dr Ingrid Pearson

BMus (Hons), Dip Ed, PhD, LTCL, LMusA, SFHEA, HonRCM

Known internationally as a scholar/performer of historical single-reed instruments, Ingrid Pearson has been a member of the RCM professoriate since 2005. She has recorded for DG Archiv and performed with major UK period ensembles including the English Baroque Soloists, The English Concert, Florilegium, Gabrieli Consort and Players, The Hanover Band, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, in venues including London’s Barbican, Queen Elizabeth, Royal Albert and Wigmore Halls, the Salzburg Mozarteum and New York’s Lincoln Centre. Activities on modern clarinet include an AHRC-funded exploration of 19-tone equally-tempered microtonality and the world premiere recording of Robert Kahn’s op 54 quintet for Rubicon Classics.

Ingrid’s activities across research and scholarship embrace historical and contemporary performance practices, practice research, historiography, single-reed iconography and organology, musical listening as well as aspects of teaching and learning in the Conservatoire environment. She has published for CUP and Routledge, and in journals including Acta Mozartiana and Performance Practice Review. Translations of Ingrid’s work appear in Chinese, German and Spanish.

Ingrid completed undergraduate studies at the University of Sydney. As a targeted graduate she was employed by the New South Wales Department of Education as both a classroom music teacher and tutor for the Performing Arts Unit. The award of an Overseas Research Scholarship then enabled Ingrid to move to the UK to undertake a PhD in performance practice at the University of Sheffield. She held lectureships in the UK university sector before joining the RCM. Ingrid works across the College’s undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.

Selected research

Pearson I (2025), Dialogues with musical histories: learning from the past, in C Lawson, R Perkins & D Salazar (eds.), Inside the Contemporary Conservatoire: Critical Perspectives from the Royal College of Music, London (pp. 124-133), Routledge [DOI].

Pearson IE, Lawson CJ & Edwards G (2024), Handel Ouverture for two clarinets and horn, HWV 424 [recording] [LINK].

Pearson IE & Rice AR (2024), Instructions for the clarinet: an illumination of musical taste in Georgian London, Ad Parnassum, 22(43), 57-115 [LINK].

Pearson IE (2021), The clarinet in opera before 1830: instrument and genre come of age, in J Ellsworth (ed.), The Clarinet (pp. 93-119), Eastman Studies in Music, University of Rochester Press [DOI].

Pearson IE, Sun E, Driver D et al. (2021), Quintet in C minor op. 54 [world premiere recording], Robert Kahn: Leaves from the Tree of life, Rubicon Classics RCD1040 [LINK].

Pearson I (2021), Discovering Robert Kahn, Clarinet and Saxophone, 46(2), 34-35 [LINK].

Pearson IE (2018) ‘Übersichblasen-Untersichblasen’ [reed above/below] in A Hofer, U Kramer, & U Sirker (eds.), Lexikon der Holzblasinstrumente: Oboe, Klarinette, Saxophon und Fagott – Baugeschichte und Spielpraxis – Komponisten und ihre Werke – Interpreten (pp. 747-748), Laaber Verlag [LINK].

Pearson IE (2018), ‘Academy of Ancient Music’, ‘Articulation’, ‘Berr, Frédéric’, ‘English Baroque Soloists’, ‘Florilegium’, ‘Gardiner, John Eliot’, ‘Iconography’, ‘Lawson, Colin’, ‘Oral tradition’, ‘Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’, ‘Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century’, ‘Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique’ and ‘Stowell, Robin’ in C Lawson & R Stowell (eds.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Historical Performance in Music, Cambridge University Press [DOI].

View Ingrid's ORCID profile. Visit website

Listen to Ingrid's lecture at Gresham College. Visit website

Faculties / departments: Historical Performance, Research, Academic staff