She was a conductor and violinist born to a musical family in Salisbury, England, where her father was an organist and music teacher, her mother a violinist, her brother Ian is a pianist, her brother Timothy is a principal horn with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and her sister, Sally, is a violist with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.
She studied in London, Rome, Paris and Nice and began her career as a violinist with the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1963. In 1964 she became a member of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Orchestra , where should become a soloist and conductor/director.
She was a director of the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and in her final years she was the Chief Conductor of the South Jutland Symphony Orchestra in Denmark.
She died of cancer in 2004 when she was 63 years old.
St. Martin in the Fields Recordings
Adagio in G minor (Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni )
EMI Classics 5 66400 (CD: Baroque for Dummies)
Conductor – Neville Marriner
Violin – Iona Brown
Adagio in G minor (Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni )
Seraphim 5 73289 2 (CD: Classical Favorites)
Conductor – Neville Marriner
Violin – Iona Brown
Here she is performing the “Menuetto” from Mozart’s “Haffner Serenade”…
Sources:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iona_Brown
- http://www.wqxr.com/cgi-bin/iowa/cla/learning/grove.html?record=1341
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,1235113,00.html