Hyperion Records

James Gilchrist began his working life as a doctor, turning to a full-time career in music in 1996. He grew up surrounded by music, and when he joined the local church choir at the age of eight, he assumed it was a normal thing to do. From then on much of his vocal training was in church choirs, and he went on to sing in the choir of New College, Oxford, as a boy treble, and as a tenor in that of King’s College, Cambridge.

While studying and working in medicine, James sang in groups such as The Sixteen, The Tallis Scholars and The Cardinall’s Musick, alongside appearing regularly in choral societies up and down the United Kingdom as tenor soloist. When his diary became rather full of solo engagements, he took a month off his medical job and dipped his toes into the world of the full-time professional musician. A month soon became ten years, and despite missing many aspects of medicine, he has no regrets.

James has appeared at the BBC Proms with the Academy of Ancient Music and the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra, and has performed with the latter on their celebrated Bach Pilgrimage with Sir John Eliot Gardiner. Among many other leading orchestras, he has also performed with The King’s Consort, with whom he has made many recordings for Hyperion. As a recitalist he has appeared with Malcolm Martineau, and is regularly partnered by pianist Anna Tilbrook, as well as harpist Alison Nicholls. His operatic performances include Quint in Britten’s Turn of the Screw, Ferrando in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Scaramuccio in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, Vaughan Williams’s Sir John in Love, Hyllus in Handel’s Hercules, Acis and Galatea at the Berlin Staatsoper, Evandre in Gluck’s Alceste and Purcell’s King Arthur with English National Opera.