Tenor · Composer · Illustrator
James Anglin
A Mississippi musician who has spent a lifetime between the stage, the score and the drawing board — and who now spends most of it teaching.
Raised on the Gulf Coast, James built a career as a lyric tenor while never putting down the pen or the brush. He has sung in opera houses and church lofts, arranged for choirs and small ensembles, illustrated children's books, and hung watercolors in coast galleries. The through line is craft: the slow, unglamorous work of getting something right.
The work
On the stage
A lyric tenor trained in the Italian school, James has sung Mozart, Puccini, oratorio and the Gilbert & Sullivan repertoire across the Mississippi Gulf Coast and beyond. His singing is built on breath, line and text — the plain conviction that the words come first.
On the page
He composes and arranges for voice, piano and small ensemble, and writes teaching material for his own students, including a boys' music course. Score study and part writing remain daily work, not a sideline.
At the easel
James works in watercolor and colored pencil, with pieces shown in galleries along the coast, and is a children's book illustrator certified with the National Library of Congress.
In the studio
He teaches one student at a time, weekly, with clear expectations and honest assessment — a room where a student can take a real artistic risk and be told the truth about it.
Selected record
- 1984
- World's Fair, New Orleans
Performed at the U.S. Pavilion of the Louisiana World Exposition.
- 1993
- Metropolitan Opera audition
One of 110 American opera singers selected to audition for the Metropolitan Opera Company — the only Mississippian among them.
- 2006
- Yale University Summer Music Program
Advanced study in vocal repertoire and performance practice.
- 2009
- American Institute of Music Studies — Graz, Austria
European study in the Italian school of singing and opera repertoire.
- Ongoing
- Artistic Director, Singing River Opera
Directing productions and building opportunities for Gulf Coast singers.
- Ongoing
- James Anglin Studios, Ocean Springs
Private instruction in voice, piano, theory, composition and visual art.
Study with James
Private voice, piano, theory and composition instruction in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.