Ailish Tynan
Irish soprano Ailish Tynan won the 2003 Rosenblatt Recital Song Prize at BBC Cardiff Singer of the World. Ailish was a member of the prestigious Vilar Young Artist Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and a BBC New Generation Artist, where she recorded and performed prolifically with the BBC orchestras and in recital.

In the current season she returns to the Royal Opera House Covent Garden as Erste Dame Die Zauberflöte and Berta Il barbiere di Siviglia; performs Górecki Symphony No.3 with the Irish National Symphony Orchestra; Beethoven Symphony No. 9 with the Philharmonia Orchestra; and recitals at Wigmore Hall, Oxford Lieder, and the National Concert Hall, Dublin.

Ailish has established herself with operatic roles including Gretel Hänsel und Gretel (The Royal Opera, Scottish Opera, and Welsh National Opera); Madame Cortese Il viaggio a Reims, Marzelline Fidelio and Madame Podtotshina’s Daughter in Shostakovich’s The Nose (The Royal Opera); Vixen The Cunning Little Vixen and Mimì La bohème (Grange Park Opera); Tigrane Radamisto (English National Opera); Papagena Die Zauberflöte (Teatro alla Scala and The Royal Opera); Despina Così fan tutte (Garsington Opera, Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse); Héro Béatrice et Bénédict (Houston Grand Opera, Opéra Comique and Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg); Sophie Der Rosenkavalier, Nannetta Falstaff and Atalanta Xerxes (Royal Swedish Opera); and Miss Wordsworth Albert Herring (Opéra Comique and Opéra de Rouen).

Among her notable concert appearances are Mahler Symphony No.8 (LSO under Valery Gergiev, Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra under Marc Albrecht, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra under Paavo Järvi, Philharmonia under Lorin Maazel, and Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under Sir Antonio Pappano); Mahler Symphony No.4 (Prague Symphony Orchestra under Jac van Steen and the Hallé under Sir Mark Elder); Mahler Symphony No. 2 (Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under Myung-whun Chung); Verdi Requiem (Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele under Michael Hofstetter); Haydn The Creation (CBSO under Andris Nelsons); Handel Messiah (AAM under Richard Egarr); and Handel Semele (The English Concert under Harry Bicket at Carnegie Hall). She has appeared at both first and last night of the BBC Proms with highlights including Bella A Midsummer Marriage (BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir Andrew Davis) and Glière’s Concerto for Coloratura Soprano (Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under Kirill Karabits).

Ailish is a passionate recitalist and works regularly with pianists including Iain Burnside, James Baillieu and Graham Johnson and Simon Lepper, giving recitals at venues and festivals including Wigmore Hall, Edinburgh, City of London, Gregynog, St. Magnus, Brighton and West Cork Music Festivals, the Vinterfespill in Norway, and for the Prince of Monaco at the Irish Embassy in Paris. She performed the world premiere of Nuit d’Afrique written for her by Judith Weir, at Wigmore Hall.

Her numerous recordings include Fauré Mélodies (Opus Arte), Nacht und Träume (Delphian) and An Irish Songbook (Signum) with pianist Iain Burnside; Messiah with the Academy of Ancient Music (EMI); and Mahler Symphony No.8 with the LSO under Valery Gergiev (LSO Live) and Philharmonia Orchestra under Lorin Maazel (Signum Classics). Ailish has presented several episodes of Saturday Classics for the BBC and has appeared on BBC Proms Extra as a TV pundit. Additionally, she has been a Jury member for the Song Prize at BBC Cardiff Singer of the World and Wigmore Hall Song Competition.

Katie Bray
Winner of the Dame Joan Sutherland Audience Prize at Cardiff Singer of the World 2019, British mezzo-soprano Katie Bray has become known for her magnetic stage presence and gleaming, expressive tone.

Recent roles for Opera North include Hansel Hansel and Gretel, Rosina Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Varvara Katya Kabanova, Louis XV Chair/Female Cat/Owl L’enfant et les sortilèges, Lola Cavalleria Rusticana, and Nancy Albert Herring. She has also sung with Irish National Opera in the title role, Griselda, English National Opera as Daughter Akhnaten and in The Way Back Home, Scottish Opera as Lucilla La Scala di seta, Welsh National Opera Zerlina, Don Giovanni, Opera Holland Park Mallika Lakmé, English Touring Opera Zenobia Radamisto, Minerva Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and Satirino La Calisto, Grimeborn Festival as Charlotte Werther, and with Garsington Opera as Zulma L’Italiana in Algeri, Zaida Il turco in Italia, and most recently Isolier Le Comte Ory, for which she received great acclaim. She also recently performed in a staged cabaret of ‘songs banned by the Nazis’, Effigies of Wickedness, at the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill, in collaboration with English National Opera.

Equally at home on the concert platform, Katie Bray has performed in prestigious venues such as the Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall, and the Holywell Music Room and she appears regularly in the London English Song Festival, where she has directed concerts at Wilton’s Music Hall, as well as at the Oxford Lieder Festival for which she recorded a disc of Schumann songs with Sholto Kynoch. Other recent highlights include a semi-staged version of Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch with Christopher Glynn and Roderick Williams at Milton Court Concert Hall and Ryedale Festival, and the premiere of new monodrama Frida with the East London Music Group.

Katie Bray is particularly noted for baroque repertoire and has appeared with Barokksolistene and Bjarte Eike, Monteverdi Choir and Sir John Eliot Gardiner, La Nuova Musica, Ludus Baroque, London Handel Orchestra and Laurence Cummings, Wroclaw Baroque Orchestra, and Spira Mirabilis. She has also appeared with orchestras including the Britten Sinfonia, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre Chambre de Paris, and the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra.

Recent and future highlights include concerts at the Oxford Lieder Festival, Viardot200 Festival, and with the Irish Baroque Orchestra, with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Jac van Steen, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Peter Whelan, Messiah for the Hallé Orchestra, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Barbican and a role in Garsington Opera’s 2023 Festival.

Katie Bray graduated as a Karaviotis Scholar from the opera course at the Royal Academy of Music, was awarded the Principal’s Prize and won First Prize in the Richard Lewis Singing Competition.

James Gilchrist
began his working life as a doctor before turning to a full-time career as a singer in 1996. His interest in music had been fired at an early age, as a chorister at New College, Oxford; later he was a choral scholar at King’s College, Cambridge. He has since developed a reputation "unsurpassed among lyric tenors" (The Independent). On both concert platform and operatic stage, his repertory ranges from Monteverdi to new commissions, and he has appeared with, among others, the Sixteen, the Academy of Ancient Music, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and English National Opera.

Gilchrist is also a versatile and prolific recitalist: his imaginative programmes have been heard in such major venues as the Wigmore Hall, Snape Maltings and Perth Concert Hall. His regular accompanists are pianists Anna Tilbrook and Julius Drake and harpist Alison Nicholls; he has also collaborated with director Netia Jones.

Gilchrist’s impressive discography includes Amaryllus in Vaughan Williams’s early opera The Poisoned Kiss and the title role in Albert Herring (both for Chandos), the Evangelist in Bach’s St John Passion (the Academy of Ancient Music’s own label), and critically acclaimed recordings of Schubert’s song cycles (Orchid Classics). For Linn he has recorded Finzi (Oh Fair To See), Britten (My Beloved is Mine) and an album coupling Leighton’s Earth, Sweet Earth with Britten’s Winter Words, and Vaughan Williams’s On Wenlock Edge.