Harriet Burns
British soprano Harriet Burns is fast developing a reputation as a “polished, witty, expressive and sweet-toned” (The Times) performer both in recital and on stage. An acclaimed interpreter of song, Harriet has performed at the Wigmore Hall, Philharmonie Luxembourg, Oxford International Song Festival, Leeds Lieder, International Lied Festival Zeist, Ryedale Festival and de Singel with pianists including James Baillieu, Imogen Cooper, Christopher Glynn, Graham Johnson, Sholto Kynoch, Malcolm Martineau, Joseph Middleton, Ian Tindale and Michael Pandya. In 2024, Harriet will release an album of Schubert Lieder with Ian Tindale for Delphian Records.

On the operatic stage, recent roles include King Harald's Saga (Judith Weir) for Waterperry Opera, Sifare (cover, Mitridate, re di Ponto, Mozart) and Oriana (cover, Amadigi, Handel) for Garsington Opera, Sister Grace (The Angel Esmeralda, Lliam Paterson), Nerina (La Fedeltà premiata, Haydn), and Aminta (Aminta e Fillide, Handel) with Guildhall Opera. In concert, she has sung Bach Magnificat and Vivaldi Dixit Dominus with Nicholas McGegan and the Royal Northern Sinfonia at Sage Gateshead, Strauss Four Last Songs with the Oxford Millennium Orchestra, and Handel Messiah with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra. In January 2024 she is looking forward to performing Thea Musgrave's Songs for a Winter's Evening with the Southbank Sinfonia and Gabriella Teychenne.

Harriet is a laureate of numerous international competitions. Successes include 2nd prize and German Lied Award at 2022 Concours Musical International de Montréal (Art Song division) where she also won a Vocal Residency at McGill and Montréal Universities. In 2019, she was awarded 2nd prize at the Wigmore Hall/Independent Opera International Song Competition, the Compulsory Song Prize and Recital Prize at the International Vocal Competition in 's-Hertogenbosch and 1st prize at the Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards at the Wigmore Hall. In 2023, she was finalist in the International Handel Singing Competition. She is proud to be a City Music Foundation Artist, Samling Artist, Oxford Lieder Young Artist and a Britten-Pears Young Artist. Harriet was a member of the Guildhall Opera School where she graduated with Distinction on the Artist Diploma programme.

Ian Tindale
‘A wonderfully responsive and assured pianist’ (The Telegraph), Ian Tindale is increasingly in demand as a specialist in song repertoire and chamber music. His recital partners have included leading song performers Ailish Tynan, Roderick Williams, James Gilchrist and Robin Tritschler, and his performances have taken him to Europe, North America and across the UK. Highlights in the 2023-4 season include recitals at the Hay Festival with Soraya Mafi and with Nick Pritchard at Edinburgh International Festival (both recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3), Oxford International Song Festival with Harriet Burns to launch a new Schubert disc with Delphian, and the commencement of a new role as Official Pianist for the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels.

Concert highlights in past seasons have included a recital tour throughout Europe with baritone and ECHO Rising Star Josep-Ramon Olivé in venues including Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, and Palau de la Música, Barcelona in the 2018-19 season; a programme with baritone and former BBC New Generation Artist James Newby for Lewes Festival of Song; and Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich songs for English Touring Opera and Marquee Arts TV in which Ian was hailed as an ‘articulate and sensitive partner’ (Opera Today). In 2022 Iain Burnside invited Ian to curate and perform in the Ludlow English Song Festival Day at the Wigmore Hall; Ian was joined by Ailish Tynan, Robin Tritschler, Elgan Thomas, Harriet Burns, Rosalind Ventris and Adam Walker for ‘Hiraeth’, a programme celebrating contemporary and historic Celtic composers.

Ian has formed several fruitful collaborative partnerships in the last decade, most significantly with soprano Harriet Burns, and together they have garnered a reputation for immersive song programmes through performances at the International Lied Festival Zeist, Vrienden van het Lied, Oxford International Song Festival, and at the Ryedale Festival. Their debut disc of Schubert Lieder together with Delphian will be released in early 2024. Ian also has a long-standing performing relationship with tenor Nick Pritchard, with whom he gave the world premiere of Daniel Kidane’s Songs of Illumination in 2018 at Leeds Lieder. Ian returned to the Oxford International Song Festival with Nick for a sold-out late-night programme of Finzi, Gurney and Clarke in October 2022. Their acclaimed recital of Britten, Faure and Poulenc at the 2023 Edinburgh International Festival will be broadcast by BBC Radio 3 in January 2024.

Ian is Artistic Director of Shipston Song, an annual song festival on the edge of the Cotswolds which he founded in 2022, and this year saw Roderick Williams, Helen Charlston and Laurence Kilsby join him and four Shipston Song Rising Stars for an immersive weekend of performances and masterclasses entitled ‘I sang it under the wild wood tree’.

As a chamber musician, most recently Ian has partnered Belgian clarinettist Annelien van Wauwe in recitals at Ryedale Festival and on BBC Radio. Ian is also a member of Ensemble Kopernikus, whose recent recording projects include the first two discs in a planned series of recordings exploring the chamber music and solo piano repertoire of Percy Hilder Miles for MPR.

Ian is a graduate of Selwyn College, Cambridge, and the Royal College of Music in London, where he continues to work as a pianist and coach. In 2017 Ian was awarded the Pianist’s Prize in the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation Song Competition and has also won accompaniment prizes at the Kathleen Ferrier Awards, Royal Overseas League Music Competition, Gerald Moore Award and Maggie Teyte Competition. He is a Britten Pears Young Artist and a Samling Artist; Ian has performed at the Wigmore Hall Samling Showcase a number of times after being selected as a Samling Artist in 2014, and he continues to work as a pianist and coach for Samling Academy.