James Way

Tenor

Born in Sussex, tenor James Way was winner of 2nd Prize in the 62nd Kathleen Ferrier Awards at the Wigmore Hall. He was awarded the 2016 Simon Sandbach Award from Garsington Opera, the ‘most promising singer’ award at the Dean and Chadlington Singing Competition and is a former Britten-Pears Young Artist. James studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Susan Waters, where he is supported by the Guildhall Trust, the Drake Calleja Trust, Countess of Munster Trust, the Behrens Foundation and the Mario Lanza Foundation. He previously graduated with a first class honours degree in music from King’s College London. 

In 2016 he made his Proms debut as a soloist in Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music in the Last Night of the Proms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo. Engagements for 2017/18 include the role of Davy in Roxanna Panufnik’s new opera Silver Birch for Garsington Opera, Jupiter in Handel’s Semele with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted by Ivor Bolton, Haydn The Creation also with the OAE conducted by Adam Fischer and joining the young artist programme of Les Arts Florissants Le Jardin des Voix.

Previous concert work includes Bach St John Passion (Evangelist) at Temple Church; a performance as part of Music on the Brink of Destruction at Wigmore Hall and on BBC Radio3; Brahms Liebeslieder Waltzes and Stephen Hough Other Love Songs at Wigmore Hall; Messiah with Chelmsford Cathedral Choir; Britten Canticle I (My Beloved Is Mine) at the Barbican as part of the LSO Guildhall Artist Platform; Bach St Matthew Passion (aria soloist) with Sir John Eliot Gardiner at Pamplona Baluarte; Lucerne KKL Concert Hall, Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw and Bozar, Brussels and Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra,

Opera credits include his debut with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Jakub Hrůša in the role of the Holy Fool (Boris Godunov) at the Royal Festival Hall; the Ballad Singer (Owen Wingrave) for the Aldeburgh and Edinburgh International Festivals (conducted by Mark Wigglesworth), cover the Governor (Simplicius Simplicissimus) for Independent Opera, Gondolier (Death in Venice) and cover M. Triquet (Eugene Onegin) both for Garsington Opera; Ferrando (Così fan tutte) for Garsington Opera’s Alvarez young artists programme and Vistola Fiume and Pastore (La liberazione di Ruggiero) for the Brighton Early Music Festival.

James was selected by pianist Graham Johnson to be a member of his Song Guild for a performance of Schubert’s Winterreise at Milton Court and was also selected to study with Peter Schreier as part of the Internationale Mendelssohn- Akademie Leipzig sponsored by the UK Mendelssohn foundation.