Ian Holtham travelled to Europe on a scholarship in his teens where he was based for over a decade. He is a student of Géza Anda, Geoffrey Parsons, Enrique Barenboim and Peter Feuchtwanger whose assistant he was for nearly five years in London. He studied composition and conducting at the Guildhall School of Music and made his South Bank and Wigmore Hall debuts before he was twenty. He has performed throughout Australia, England, Ireland, Switzerland, Italy, France, Austria, Hungary, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and Korea.

Ian has broadcast regularly with the ABC since the late seventies, and is a constant performer here and overseas, returning frequently to Europe and Asia for concert and masterclass tours. He has a vast and varied repertoire which, excluding works for solo piano, contains well over forty piano concertos. He holds honours degrees in Music from Durham University and in Arts from Melbourne University where he also gained his PhD, and has an extensive array of international performance qualifications.

As well as his busy schedule of performing and teaching, he is on the Board of the AMEB in Victoria, is the Federal Chair of the Piano Specialist Panel and has adjudicated innumerable awards in Australia and abroad. Ian Holtham has published a book on piano technique and has released a number of four solo CDs, including the complete Chopin Etudes, to considerable critical acclaim. He is currently Head of Keyboard Studies and Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Music, The University of Melbourne.