Iona Brown
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Iona Brown (7 January 1941 - 5 June 2004) was a British violinist and conductor. At the time of her death, she was the director of Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in London and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.
Brown was born into a musical family; her parents were musicians; her brother Timothy is principal horn player with the BBC Symphony Orchestra; another brother, Ian, is a pianist, and her sister Sally plays viola with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.
From 1963 to 1966, Brown was a member of the Philharmonia Orchestra. In 1964, she joined the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, working her way up through the ranks to become a soloist in 1974.
In 1981, Brown was appointed artistic director of the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. In 1987, she was given a similar position at the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. From 1985 to 1989, she was guest director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
In the last years until her death she was chief conductor of the South Jutland Symphony Orchestra Denmark.
From 1968 to 2004 Brown lived in the the Wiltshire village of Bowerchalke. When she took part in BBC Radio 4 Kaleidoscope, explaining how hard it was to play her signature piece The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams, she said that the lark song of long walks on nearby 'Marleycombe Down' was a central tenet of her performance.
She died of cancer in 2004 at age 63 at her home town of Salisbury, southern England.
