Mark Wildman

SVSO Tutor

Email: [email protected]

Mark Wildman received his early formal musical education at The King’s School, Gloucester and as a chorister in Gloucester Cathedral where he studied and sang under Dr Herbert Sumsion. Later on he studied at the Royal Academy of Music under the guidance of Henry Cummings, Rex Stephens, Tom Hammond and Norman Feasey, and later with Rupert Bruce Lockhart. He was awarded the Westmorland Scholarship, the Recital Diploma and the Frederick Shinn Fellowship. His career began as a Choral Exhibitioner at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, where he sang for three years which was followed by a similar period with the BBC Singers with whom he travelled and performed world-wide.

2013 marked Mark’s fortieth and final season on the concert platform as a recitalist and soloist in Oratorio. His last concert being in Huddersfield Town Hall with the Huddersfield Choral Society, in Handel’s Israel in Egypt, forty years after his debut in that hall. Having travelled and performed throughout Europe, Scandinavia, the British Isles and the USA, performing with many of Britain’s foremost orchestras and with several leading conductors of the day, among them Gennadi  Rozhdestvensky, Sir Charles Groves, James Loughran, Sir Neville Marriner, Meredith Davies, James Lockhart, Donald Hunt, Michael Gielen, Jane Glover, Christopher Robinson and Sir David Willcocks, he now devotes himself entirely to teaching and working with young singers at the Royal Academy of Music and at the Royal Northern College of Music where he was appointed to the tutorial staff in September 2024.

Since 1982 he has combined a busy performing career with that of a professor of Singing at the Royal Academy of Music where he was appointed to the Vocal Faculty in 1982 and subsequently as Head of Vocal Studies in 1991. He has taught prize winners in the most prominent British singing awards: Cardiff Singer of the World, the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Awards, Royal Overseas League, National Mozart Competition, Kathleen Ferrier Bursary and others. Many of his current and former students are now singing principal roles with national and international opera companies including La Scala Milan, the Bolshoi, Moscow, St Petersburg, the Metropolitan Opera, New York, English National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and in several European houses including those in Hamburg, Hannover, Stuttgart, Duesseldorf, Munich, Berlin, Vienna, Innsbruck, Madrid, Barcelona and Paris.  He is a much-travelled adjudicator and has visited Holland, Hong Kong , Korea, USA, Iceland, and France to give Masterclasses. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in 1994 a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1995, and a Professor in the University of London in 2013. Upon his retirement as Head of Vocal Studies at RAM in 2017, the Principal conferred upon him the title of Henry Cummings Distinguished Professor of Singing. In 2021 he was honoured and proud to receive the Sir Charles Santley Award from the worshipful company of Musicians.