Scottish tenor Archie Inns maintains a varied performing career spanning opera, oratorio, song and consort work, appearing across the UK and internationally with leading ensembles and at major festivals.
A Josephine Baker Trust Artist and a Fellow of The English Concert, Archie is a sought-after oratorio soloist, working with groups such as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Arcangelo, the Gabrieli Consort and Polyphony. His oratorio repertoire centres on the great Bach roles — the Evangelist and tenor arias in the St John and St Matthew Passions, and the Evangelist in the Christmas Oratorio, the last of which he has performed with Polyphony and the Britten Sinfonia in a BBC Radio 3 broadcast — alongside Handel’s Messiah and Rossini’s Petite messe solennelle. He has appeared at the London Handel Festival as the Amalekite in Handel’s Saul with Arcangelo, and as Coridon in Acis and Galatea with the Gabrieli Consort.
On the opera stage, Archie has been an Emerging Artist with Westminster Opera Company, held the James Bowman Young Artistship at Vache Baroque, and is an Associate Artist with Oxford Opera. His roles range from Prince Gvidon in The Golden Cockerel and Alfred in Die Fledermaus to Phoebus and Coridon in Purcell’s The Fairy Queen. He has also sung in the chorus for the UK premiere of Huang Ruo’s M. Butterfly with the BBC Singers, for Opera Rara’s La rondine, and in the semi-chorus for the UK premiere of Laura Karpman’s BALLS at the Royal Festival Hall under Marin Alsop.
Song is central to Archie’s work. He made his debut at the Oxford International Song Festival alongside James Gilchrist and returned as a Young Artist with his regular collaborator, the pianist Alfred Fardell. A Countess of Munster Recital Scheme Artist, he is the recipient of the Luxon Amit Folkestone-on-Song Bursary Award and Song Prize, the Mendl-Schrama Prize, the Oxford and Cambridge Club Music Prize and the Dorothy Richardson English Song Prize, and was a finalist in the inaugural SWAPRA Rebecca Clarke Song Competition.
As a consort singer, Archie works regularly with the BBC Singers, Polyphony and The Sixteen, and has sung in major liturgical services at Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral and St Paul’s Cathedral. His projects with the BBC Singers have included Poulenc’s Figure humaine and appearances at the Aldeburgh Festival and the BBC Proms.
Archie is studying for a Master’s in Vocal Performance at the Royal College of Music with Miranda Wright and Nicky Spence, supported in full by the Drapers’ de Turckheim Scholarship, the London Women’s Clinic Foundation Award and Mason Award, alongside the Countess of Munster Musical Trust (Derek Butler Award), the Sir James Caird Trust (Wiseman Prize), the Elizabeth Izatt Trust and the Kathleen Trust. He holds a degree in Philosophy and Theology from Christ Church, Oxford, where he was a Choral Scholar, and spent his gap year singing at St John’s College, Cambridge under Andrew Nethsingha. His early training took place in the Junior Department of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland with Paul Keohone, and as a chorister at Durham Cathedral under James Lancelot, where his studies with Miranda Wright began.
