Isabelle Adams held a choral scholarship at Clare College, Cambridge University, where she gained a BA and MPhil in Natural Sciences. After completing an MMus in Early Music at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she performed, toured and recorded with consort groups such as the Monteverdi Choir and The Cambridge Singers, under the direction of esteemed conductors Sir John Elliot Gardiner and John Rutter.
Alongside her consort work, Isabelle trained as a vocal animateur with Spitalfields Music and Wigmore Hall. Subsequently, she has developed a distinctive conducting career, working with community participants alongside professional musicians to produce high-quality artistic collaborations. She was the chorus leader for the RPS award-winning We Are Shadows (2011, John Barber, Spitalfields Music) and Musical Director for the BASCA award-winning Woodwose (2013, Kerry Andrew, Wigmore Hall). More recently, she assembled a chorus of all-comers for the London premiere of David Lang’s Crowd Out, a site-specific outdoors celebration of ‘1,000 whispering, shouting and singing voices’ (2014, Spitalfields Music).
Isabelle is the founding director of All Sing: Harrow Road Community Choir, a 50-strong non-auditioned chorus of local people of all ages and backgrounds, singing varied repertoire from opera choruses to world folk, via renaissance polyphony and new commissions. Since forming in 2008, the group have extended their ambitions from low-key community events to more high-profile staged performances at Wigmore Hall.
Currently Isabelle is working at the Royal Opera House on Altogether Opera, working with elderly singers of all abilities. In addition, she has delivered vocal projects and training for Opera North, Britten Sinfonia and the Royal Academy of Music.