Robin Ireland was born in 1954, son of viola player Patrick Ireland and pianist Peggy Gray. He was a chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral Choir School and studied at Cambridge University and at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. He had a short spell as leader of the Las Palmas Symphony Orchestra and subsequently became a founder member of the Piano Quartet, Domus, which toured with its own portable concert hall (a geodesic dome) as well as having great success in more conventional venues.
Robin is well known as the violist of the Lindsay String Quartet, with whom he played for twenty years. He now plays with the Primrose Piano Quartet and the Anton Stadler piano/clarinet/viola trio, and has a Duo with the pianist Tim Horton, with whom he has recorded a CD of Russian music including the Shostakovich Viola Sonata, released on the Nimbus label (CD available from Robin). As a soloist, he has broadcast on BBC Radio 3, performed Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with the Liverpool Philharmonic and the London Mozart Players, and has in his repertoire all the major works for viola. In 2005, Robin was commissioned by the University of Sheffield to write a string quartet for its centenary celebrations. This work, played by the Lindsays, features on a CD alongside Pairings (his three duos, for viola and cello, two violas, and violin and viola) released on the Meridian label
Robin is Senior Viola Tutor at the Birmingham Conservatoire and has taught on courses run by ESTA, Pro Corda and Cadenza. He is a keen student of the Alexander Technique and of Chi Kung, both of which influence his teaching.
Robin plays on an Amati viola made in the early 1600s. He lives in Sheffield.
