Austin Haynes

Austin is a countertenor originally from Aotearoa New Zealand and grew up between New Zealand and Melbourne. In 2019 he moved to Oxford to study a BA and a Masters in medieval and renaissance literature. Austin made his professional opera debut as Liang Shanbo in Richard Mills’ The Butterfly Lovers in Singapore 2023 and other recent roles have included Disinganno (Handel, Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno), Aeneas (Pepusch, Death of Dido) the Spirit (Purcell, Dido and Aeneas), the Cold Genius (Purcell, King Arthur) and Nyukhin (Hogarth, The Evils of Tobacco). Other recent solo repertoire has included Vivaldi’s Nisi Dominus, Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater and Bach’s Laßt uns Sorgen, Laßt uns Wachen. In Australia Austin has appeared as a soloist with the Adelaide Festival, the Rising Festival and the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and in the UK with Instruments of Time and Truth, the Oxford Bach Soloists and New Chamber Opera. In New Zealand, he has performed with groups including NZ Barok, Days Bay Opera, Auckland Opera Studio, and the Night Watch.

He was the 2022 winner of the Herald Sun Aria competition in Melbourne and won the 2022 City of Kingston Aria from Grand Opera prize. In 2024, he came third in the Lexus Song Quest in Wellington and was a finalist in the 2024 NZ Aria where he won first prizes in the Māori Song and Oratorio categories. His private voice studies have been supported by the Isla Baring Prize from the Tait Trust, and previously by the Isla Baring Birthday Prize and the Tait White Loewenthal Memorial Prize. In Oxford, Austin was a choral scholar with the choir of Queen’s College Oxford and with the Oxford Bach Soloists.

Austin is a registered Māori translator and poet, and he writes in both English and the Māori language. He was the 2023 winner of takahē journal’s Monica Taylor Poetry Prize. He is also a Wellington Doctoral Scholar at Victoria University of Wellington where he researches the history of literary and song translation between English and Māori.

Bio Updated August 2026