Bass-baritone Martin Achrainer has an impressively wide operatic repertory, extending from Mozart to contemporary works. In addition to opera, he sings concert and religious music, lieder, musical theater, and more.

Achrainer was born in 1978 into a farming family in Kitzbühel, in Austria's Tyrol region. For a time, he studied to become a chef and then took acting classes in Vienna. Switching to voice, he enrolled at the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna, where his principal teacher was Rotraud Hansmann. He also took classes with Brigitte Fassbaender, Irina Gavrilovici, Robert Holl, and Charles Spencer. The Hugo Wolf Prize, as well as prizes at the Robert Schumann Competition in Zwickau, Germany, the Gradus ad Parnassum competition, and the Hilde Zadek Competition for performance of 20th century music, helped launch Achrainer's career, which began with a performance at the Landestheater Innsbruck. In 2004, Achrainer began a long association with the Landestheater Linz.

In 2010, Achrainer made his recording debut in a performance of Franz von Suppé's little-heard Missa Dalmatica. He has developed a large operatic repertory that stretches from Mozart to Philip Glass, in whose music he has increasingly specialized. He also often sings religious music, gives lieder recitals, and appears in operetta and musical theater, including jazz-flavored scores by Kurt Weill and Leonard Bernstein. Achrainer has appeared in concert across continental Europe, in Japan, and in the U.S. He sang the title role in Glass's Kepler in New York in 2009 and recorded the work for Glass's Orange Mountain Music label in 2011. Achrainer has appeared at such major venues as the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, KKL Luzern in Switzerland, and Suntory Hall in Tokyo, and he has appeared at the Salzburg Festival and other major European festivals. He has continued to record for Orange Mountain Music, appearing in Glass's Spurren der Verirrten (The Lost) in 2014. In 2022, Achrainer joined pianist Maki Namekawa, with whom he has often performed, for a recording of Glass songs. ~ James Manheim, Rovi