Mezzo soprano Jane Irwin studied at Lancaster University and at the RNCM. Her many prizes include the 1993 Singers' Competition at the Geneva International Music Competition and the 1991 Decca Kathleen Ferrier Prize.

As a concert and recital singer Jane Irwin has appeared regularly in Britain, Europe and America. In November 2002 she made her Carnegie Hall debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony conducted by Mariss Jansons.

This followed on from highly successful concerts in 1999 of Mahler Lieder eines Fahrenden Gesellen with the same forces at the BBC Proms and the Berlin Festival. She returned to Pittsburgh in 2006 for Mahler Das Lied von der Erde with Sir Andrew Davis. She made her debut with the San Francisco Symphony singing Handel Lucrezia in 2005, returning in 2006 for Mozart Coronation Mass and in January 2007 sang Chausson Poème de L’amour et de la mer for the American Symphony Orchestra under Leon Botstein in New York

She has sung Beethoven's Missa Solemnis with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra under Michael Gielen and Mahler Das Lied von der Erde for the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Kent Nagano and with the BBC Philharmonic with Vassily Sinaisky.

She has worked with the Orchestre de Paris, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Spanish National Orchestra (Zemlinsky Eine Florentinisches Tragödie and Schreker Funf Gesänge), Finnish Radio Symphony, Academia di Santa Cecilia in Rome (Mahler Das Klagende Lied), and with Semyon Bychkov, Libor Pesek, Donald Runnicles, Antonio Pappano, Matthias Bamert, Trevor Pinnock, Mark Elder, Paul Daniel, Joseph Swensen, Richard Armstrong and Jakov Kreizberg. She has given recitals at the Châtelet, Paris, London, Geneva, Aix-en-Provence and Japan.

Jane Irwin has sung regularly at the Edinburgh International Festival, most recently Britten Phaedra at the Queen’s Hall with the Scottish Ensemble.