Ian Assersohn is a composer, teacher, accompanist and conductor who lives in Great Bookham, Surrey with his wife Jan and their family.

As composer and librettist, he is the author of the children's musical Lancelot Wins Again!, which has received two successful productions at Cottesmore School in Sussex. He has also written a quantity of piano music, chamber music and several songs for full chorus including "Four War Poets" and "Dona Nobis Pacem", both of which were performed at the Leatherhead Theatre in November 2008.

His song Sing as one, for which he also wrote the lyrics, was chosen as the winning entry in the 2010 Making Music 75th birthday composition competition and another song, Light a candle, also with lyrics by Ian, reached the final 6 in the Waverley Trust "Sing a New Song" competition.

He went to Westminster School, where he produced his first two musical stage shows: Yesterday's Rainbow and Keats. After school he studied at the Royal College of Music in London with the late John Lambert, and left with a B.Mus and an ARCM in piano teaching.After the RCM, he spent a year on a Netherlands Government Scholarship at the Koningklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag where he studied composition with Louis Andriessen and Peter Schat.

As co-founder of Sequenza Music Productions, Ian wrote music for commercials and TV programmes, including Timewatch and two documentaries by the historian Michael Woods.

Ian has written the music for student productions at RADA in London (including Woyczeck and Amadeus) and for a Leeds Playhouse production of The Marat/Sade directed by Helena Kaut-Howson.

Ian's popular First Time Bars - available to buy from Amazon and other internet bookshops - is a handbook specially designed to help choral singers who want to improve their knowledge of music theory and choral repertoire. He has also developed an innovative new approach to sight-singing using a simplified notation.

Ian's latest large-scale project is The Song of Songs - a 40-minute setting of the Old Testament book for Soprano and tenor soli, choir and instrumental ensemble. The Song of Songs will be premiered at the Menuhin Hall in November 2010 by Leatherhead Choral Society.

Apart from Leatherhead Choral Society, Ian is also musical director of Leatherhead Orchestra and Concordia Singers in Crawley.

Ian can be contacted by email at ian@appletreemusic.net and some of his compositions and other writings are available here.

And now you can also follow Ian on Twitter.