BBC Radio 3

John Shea was born in Kingston-upon-Thames and began playing the piano at the age of 8 and the oboe at 11. When he was 12 he won a Junior Exhibition to the Royal College of Music, and went on to study at Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music; in 2001 he completed an M.Mus. at London University.

John has worked as a coach, accompanist and continuo player, freelancing with the Royal Opera (Covent Garden), English National Opera and most of the other major companies in Britain and Ireland. He was the senior repetiteur of Wexford Festival Opera from 1996 to 2006. 

Highlights of his work abroad include coaching at an opera summer school in a Belgian château, rehearsing Handel's Orlando on a Tuscan hillside with eighteen sheep and a horse (and five singers), and the four months he spent at the Banff Centre in Canada, bathing in the sulphur pools and learning to play shuffleboard in between rehearsals for Birtwistle's Punch and Judy.

Projects for 2011 include Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito (English Touring Opera) and Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos (Montepulciano).

The BBC entered his life in 1994 when he became an announcer on the World Service, and he joined Radio 3 two years later. He is one of the regular presenters of Through the Night and has also presented concerts from the BBC Proms and the Brighton, City of London and Three Choirs Festivals, as well as three series of Youth Orchestras of the World. His hobbies include swimming and sleeping