British–Finnish countertenor David Hackston began his musical studies in Bradford-on-Avon, England. He has completed studies in early music singing and performance practice at Helsinki Metropolia University as a student of soprano Tuuli Lindeberg and countertenor Teppo Lampela and subsequently undertook a master’s degree in early music at the Escola Superior de Música, Artes e Espectáculo (ESMAE) in Porto, Portugal, under the guidance of Prof. Magna Ferreira. David is a core member of Helsinki Chamber Choir, regularly appears with the Coro Casa da Música, Porto, and in 2010 he founded The English Vocal Consort of Helsinki, an ensemble dedicated to exploring the rich vocal tradition of the English Renaissance and Romantic eras. He is also a founding member of the Baroque opera company Orpheus’ Muses. A year after its inception, the company was given the accolade of Early-Music Deed of the Year 2017, a prize awarded by the Finnish Early-Music Society.

Notable recent oratorio performances include the alto solos in Messiah (Handel), St John Passion (J. S. Bach) and, in collaboration with Ensemble Nylandia, the role of John the Baptist in San Giovanni Battista (Stradella). On stage he has performed the roles of Didymus in Handel’s dramatic oratorio Theodora, Ottone in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, and the Spirit in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Together with lutenist Mikko Ikäheimo, David has presented recital programmes exploring the music of John Dowland and his contemporaries, the French air de cour repertoire, early Italian monody and the vihuela songs of the Iberian early Renaissance. David has a particular interest in 16^th century Portuguese polyphony and has produced modern editions of several anonymous manuscripts.

David is an avid performer of contemporary music, and with Helsinki Chamber Choir he has performed numerous 20^th century choral classics including works by Olivier Messiaen, Iannis Xenakis, Beat Furrer, Salvatore Sciarrino, Sampo Haapamäki and Eugene Birman, et al. In recent years David has championed the countertenor role in Kaija Saariaho’s Écho! for ensemble and electronics. Notable world premières include the role of Satan in Timothy Page’s Between Hell and Earth (2013) and the vocal part in Lauri Supponen’s cantata Q (2018), both roles that require a vocal range of almost three octaves. David has given numerous performances of Peter Maxwell Davies’s iconic Eight Songs for a Mad King, most recently in September 2021 in Lappeenranta, Finland. In May 2019 he sang the role of K in the long-awaited première performance of Juhani Nuorvala’s Flash Flash, an opera written in extended just intonation about the life and death of Andy Warhol, and in 2021 sang the role of Reader 1 (written in Cantonese) in the opera minn[i]e by Tze Yeung Ho. In 2019 he performed the role of Triplet 1 in the Estonian première of James Macmillan’s opera Clemency as part of the Nargenfestival under the direction of the composer himself.