Mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston is adept in both traditional and historical-performance contexts, in repertories ranging from the Renaissance to contemporary music. She has won major awards and honors, including designation as a BBC New Generation Artist.

Charlston was born in London. Her first experiences as a singer came in the St. Albans Abbey Girls Choir. Charlston spent four years as a choral scholar -- a student who receives financial support in exchange for singing in a choir -- at Trinity College, Cambridge. She also had a scholarship under famed accompanist Joseph Middleton's Pembroke College Lieder Scheme. With the Trinity College Choir, she often took solos and was heard on several recordings under director Stephen Layton, the first of which was 2015's Yulefest! In 2018, Charlston was the mezzo-soprano soloist on the choir's recording of Bach's Mass in B minor, BWV 232. In 2017, she was designated a Rising Star of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment for a term lasting until 2019. In that year, she recorded an album of Bach cantatas with Amici Voices, a group she founded.

Charlston won first prize at the 2018 Handel Singing Competition, and in 2021, she joined Le Jardin des Voix, the singing academy maintained by the French early music ensemble Les Arts Florissants, and her appearances as a soloist have featured both Baroque works (she sang in a performance of Handel's Messiah, under Layton, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra) and later music (Duruflé's Requiem with the City of London Sinfonia, among others). She is making an impact beyond Britain, performing with the Seattle Symphony in a worldwide tour of Messiah performances. Charlston has also sung contemporary music, and in 2020, she premiered and recorded The Isolation Songbook, a group of 15 newly commissioned works written during the COVID-19 lockdown of that year. She has appeared on a variety of other recordings, including one of Jan Ladislav Dussek's Messe Solemnelle with the Academy of Ancient Music; An Elizabethan Christmas with the Renaissance chamber ensemble Fretwork, and an album of choral works by Michael Haydn with the Lawes Baroque Players and the St. Albans Cathedral Girls Choir. In 2022, Charlston released the Baroque vocal recital Battle Cry: She Speaks, with theorbist Toby Carr, on the Delphian label. ~ James Manheim, Rovi