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.