Ian Pritchard, harpsichordist, organist, and musicologist, is a specialist in early music and historical keyboard practices. As a continuo player he has performed with many leading early music ensembles, such as the Academy of Ancient Music, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Florilegium (with which he has toured in Europe and in South America). As a chamber musician, Mr. Pritchard has collaborated with leading figures in early music, including Monica Huggett, Elizabeth Blumenstock, Elizabeth Wallfisch and Rachel Podger. He has also performed under eminent early music conductors including Christopher Hogwood, Emanuelle Haïm, Nicholas McGeegan, and Laurence Cummings. He has performed in masterclasses for Trevor Pinnock, Kenneth Gilbert, and Gustav Leonhardt, and has won prizes in the Broadwood Harpsichord Competition, London (first prize), the P. Bernardi Competition in Bologna, and in the Bruges Competition. Mr. Pritchard began playing the harpsichord at the age of 13, beginning studies in his native Los Angeles with Susanne Shapiro. Earning his Bachelor’s in Music from the Oberlin Conservatory, Ohio (where he studied with Lisa Goode Crawford), he moved to Europe in 2000. From 2000 – 2002 he studied at the Royal Academy of Music with John Toll, Laurence Cummings, and James Johnstone, earning the prestigious DipRam award.

In 2007 he returned to Los Angeles, where he is currently a PhD candidate in musicology, and where he appears frequently with many of the leading local musical ensembles such as the L.A. Philharmonic, the L.A. Master Chorale, and Musica Angelica. He has also performed as a concerto soloist with the L.A. Chamber Orchestra. As a musicologist, Mr. Pritchard’s interests include keyboard music of the late Renaissance and early Baroque improvisation, notation, compositional process, and performance practice. His dissertation focuses on Italian keyboard tablature notation and intabulation. In 2003 – 2004 Mr. Pritchard was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Italy, where he studied with Liuwe Tamminga and Andrea Marcon, and conducted research on early Italian keyboard music. In 2015 Mr. Pritchard was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. He is a founding member and music director of Tesserae, as well as music director for Kontrapunktus and Colburn Early Music Ensemble. He has taught at Mount Saint Mary’s University and is currently a full-time professor of music history at the Colburn School Conservatory of Music.